Ancient Woodland Restoration

Help us to conserve and restore UK Ancient Woodland today. Your contribution will benefit the protection and restoration of ancient woodlands, a carbon rich habitat and precious woodland ecosystem here in the UK. 

Choosing UK ancient woodland restoration has many amazing outcomes:

• Conserve a rare and unique ecosystem for future generations.
• Superior carbon sequestration rates compared to younger woodlands.
• Improving habitat for countless species of struggling British wildlife.
  
• Flood mitigation improvements as these woodlands hold more water when restored to their potential.

Why Protect Ancient Woodland?

Ancient woodlands and the wildlife contained within them have co-evolved for thousands of years, creating diverse, distinctive and valuable ecosystems that cannot be re-created.

They contain a rich seedbank which makes them particularly biodiverse, and each ancient veteran tree is an entire ecosystem supporting flora, fauna, lichens and fungi.

Only 2.5% of the UK is covered in ancient woodland, and much of that has been severaly degraded by timber plantations of non-native timber, invasive species, all of which is of little benefit the wildlife species that have specialized for the sorts of species that would have been found before. We can reverse this decline but we need your help to do it.

How it works

Ancient woodland restoration work involves clearing conifers, allowing light back to the woodland floor to promote natural regeneration of native trees, and removing invasive species. This work costs money, and the land itself costs even more.

Your sponsorship is a donation, which helps us buy more ancient woodlands to restore like High Wood, Cornwall. Protect Earth bought High Wood in 2022, and you see how we're doing already in this video.

There is plenty more work to do at High Wood, but Protect Earth is also currently in the process of trying to buy a second ancient woodland, which your sponsorships will help with too. When we've bought that site? We'll go looking for another, so long as you folks keep supporting us.

What you receive

You will receive a receipt letting you know we received your generous sponsorship, and as soon as a one meter square is assigned to you it will be emailed over with a certficate showing you where it is. 

This will contain a what3words to let you know where it is, and most of them can easily be visited sometime so long as you are careful not to tread on any wildlife.