With the birds singing among the freshly emerged leaves and a haze of vivid bluebells speckled with the white highlights of stitchwort, there can be no more uplifting activity than a walk through a spring woodland.

As with most of Yorkshire’s wildlife habitats, woodlands require a lot of TLC to maintain their value for wildlife. Traditional woodland management practises such as coppicing and the maintenance of woodland rides (tracks and paths) contribute to the natural diversity within a wood, providing lots of edges and sheltered spots where insects and wild flowers can thrive. The Trust has a major program of woodland management work across Yorkshire each year, funded by your membership subscriptions and in some cases, grants.

This year, however, we want to do much more! With a little extra funding we can really ramp up our woodland work, creating more habitat for woodland wild flowers and butterflies. We need to buy new equipment which will enable us to carry out larger scale works, such as removing non-native trees that have been planted in some of the woodlands we now own. Trees such as non-native larch and sitka spruce were planted in the middle of last century and we need heavy equipment to remove them. In some areas, we would like to pay specialist tree surgeons to help us remove larger trees. We would also like to task contractors with pollarding of larger trees at some sites, which cuts them off at head height, allowing the branches to regrow. This extends the life of the trees and the gnarled, old trunks provide great shelter for bats, birds and insects.

Tim Thom our regional manager in North Yorkshire; “We can afford to remove some of the alien conifers from Grass Wood Nature Reserve in the Dales each year. With a little more money we could really turn the clock back which would be a real boost to the wildlife of the reserve.”

Brian Lavelle, our reserves officer in the Vale of York; “We urgently need new tree felling equipment and protective gear. This will mean the field team can remove larger trees where necessary and continue doing so for years to come.”

Karen McDiarmid, reserves officer for west Yorkshire: “Large scale coppicing has made a dramatic difference at Hetchell Wood near Leeds. The ground is carpeted with a tapestry of bluebells, magenta-pink early purple orchids and yellow archangel. If we could undertake works like this in more of our woods, it would really make a difference.”

·         Four donations of five pounds would enable us to replant with native trees, an area of woodland cleared of non-native trees.

·         Seven donations of five pounds would buy a set of timber tongs, used for removing cut timber safely.

·         Seven donations of ten pounds would buy a new felling lever, essential for the safe removal of large non-native trees.

·         Ten donations of £100 would cover the costs of pollarding trees at Moorlands near York.

Some species that benefit:

Bluebells: Like many woodland flowers, bluebells need sunlight to flourish and really benefit from coppicing and other management practises

Redstart: This gorgeous summer visiting bird breeds in native woodlands in the Dales and on the North York Moors. It is an insect feeder, so creating sunny glades really helps this species find food.

Longhorn beetles: many of these striking beetles lay their eggs in rotting wood, and are attracted to the nectar offered by flowers along woodland edges.

Purple hairstreak butterfly: This exquisite gem breeds on oak trees and benefits from the removal of non-native conifers in some of our woodland sites.

This appeal will fund new equipment and work on these nature reserves

·         Appleton Mill

·         Ashberry

·         Birch Wood

·         Broadhead Clough

·         Brockadale

·         Chafer Wood

·         Garbutt Wood

·         Grass Wood

·         Harland Mount

·         Hetchell Wood

·         Littlebeck Wood

·         Low Wood

·         Potteric Carr

·         Staveley

·         Upper Dunsforth Carrs

·         Upper Park Wood