Welcome to your Latest from the Woods newsletter on Friday, November 22nd.

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Due to FJ's impending deadline for the December edition, we are bringing you something slightly different in today's newsletter. I hope you enjoy it!

I am on annual leave next week, but - all being well - your newsletter will feature a guest columnist.

Jack

CRUCIAL information on the condition of nature and the variety of wildlife in the nation’s forests is being gathered at a speed and level of detail never before available thanks to innovative biodiversity monitoring techniques being rolled out.

Working with partners NatureMetrics and AgriSound, Forestry England is collecting eDNA samples of soil, water and air from across some of the 1,500 forests and woodlands in their care, and in March began installing 130 bioacoustic listening devices in four wild areas in the nation’s forests, to track the presence of winged insects.

Already these biodiversity monitoring techniques are giving FE ecologists enormous amounts of data revealing previously unknown species and helping them plan their actions to restore nature. Across 21 forests, 656 eDNA soil samples taken over four months showed the presence of more than 5,000 unique species of fungi, more than have ever been discovered in the nation’s forests in the last hundred years using traditional sampling methods, alongside a further 1,000 species of invertebrates.

The glistening waxcap is just one example of the thousands of fungi newly discovered. This endangered species is on the IUCN Red List and its presence indicates a species-rich grassland habitat which can support rare wildlife.

Andrew Stringer, Forestry England head of environment and nature recovery, said: "The data we now have about the fungi and invertebrate species present in the nation’s forests is mind-blowing and these new techniques are a step-change in how we monitor biodiversity.

"Until now, directly monitoring species has been extremely difficult and time-consuming and like others working to restore nature, we’ve had to rely on proxies such as the condition of a habitat, or the presence of deadwood in a forest landscape to infer the presence of specific species."

The detailed baseline is a new reference point for measuring how effective nature restoration activities are in the forests and woodlands Forestry England cares for. Biotechnology company NatureMetrics have converted the large species lists discovered through eDNA monitoring into accessible, robust data, giving Forestry England’s teams a new ability to track these biodiversity metrics over time and space.

As well as gathering data through eDNA, Forestry England is working with agriculture technology company, AgriSound, who have developed specific algorithms that will track and report on pollinator activity via its bioacoustic monitoring device ‘Polly’.

These Polly monitoring devices are producing real-time data on the presence of the common bumblebee in four wild areas in the nation’s forests, Neroche in Somerset, Wareham in Dorset, Newtondale in North Yorkshire and Kielder Forest in Northumberland. AgriSound’s Polly monitoring devices’ algorithms enable them to track bees’ flight by recognising wingbeat sounds and vibration, showing when they are present and their activity levels.

Data so far from the four Forestry England wild areas suggests that while Polly devices have been present, Neroche has shown greatest levels of pollinator activity, followed closely by Kielder, Wareham and Newtondale.

"Given that since 1919 we’ve discovered a total of 18,000 species in the nation’s forests, I think these cutting-edge methods are going to discover many more and we’ll smash through this total very soon" Andrew added. "These emerging technologies mean soon we’ll have ‘weather stations for nature’ throughout the nation’s forests telling us what is happening to nature at a detail we’ve never had before. And all of the data we collect will be available to everyone, for free."

THIS WEEK'S TOP STORY: Landowner fined and ordered to replant trees after Forestry Commission probe

A LANDOWNER has been fined and ordered to replant trees after failing to restock a harvested woodland.

The Northumberland-based landowner had been granted permission to fell the trees at the site in 2015 on the condition it was restocked by June 2019. After missing this deadline, Forestry Commission officials issued an enforcement notice, ordering the work to be carried out by June 2022. Again, this did not happen.

An inspection by the FC found that no planting had taken place and, following engagement with the landowner to encourage replanting without criminal proceedings, a referral was made to the Crown Prosecution Service, ultimately leading to conviction.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE

PICTURE OF THE WEEK

Snow has hit many parts of the UK this week, but that won't stop forestry professionals from ensuring home-grown timber gets to where it needs to be.

📸 PA Agency