Counting the cost of deer policy
The Government announced in 2018 that it will provide £50million of funding to plant 11million trees in England by 2022.
Much of this is to underpin the Woodland Carbon Guarantee, which encourages farmers and landowners to create new woodland in return for payments of woodland carbon units as these trees mature.
The chief aim of this mass tree planting, we are told, is to “leave the planet in a better state than we found it”. This will be achieved by the newly planted trees capturing carbon.
This funding is additional to the Countryside Stewardship Woodland Creation Grant, which focuses on the habitat benefits provided by woodland. So far so green. However, there is one rather deer-shaped elephant in the room.
Browsing on hedgerows
It is estimated that there are
