Personal stories of people fighting to protect beloved trees
Markwells Wood in the South Downs National Park is an area of ancient woodland home to rich biodiversity, including the rare Bechstein’s bat.
UK Oil and Gas wanted to extract oil from underneath the beautiful Markwells Wood. The proposals included the use of a technique known as acidisation which involves injecting chemicals into the ground.
Find out howFriends of the Earth helped campaign group Markwells Wood Watch to lobby local politicians to object to the plans.
Members of Treesponsibility have planted over 250,000 trees near Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire since 1998.
Treesponsibility is a local action group which believes that tree-planting is a practical way to engage people on climate breakdown.
"Well designed tree and hedge planting has multiple benefits including carbon absorption, flood mitigation, cleaner air, and less soil erosion," says Dongria Kondh. The group doesn't believe planting trees is a substitute for reducing emissions.
Dirk Jansen has been fighting opencast coal-mining in the Rhineland for 30 years.
Germany's hunger for lignite spelled doom for the Hambach Forest, which has survived intact since the Ice Age and is home to the endangered Bechstein's bat, green woodpeckers and groves of mature oak and hornbeam.
Dirk has fought tirelessly to protect this beautiful place and end Germany's addiction to coal. Read his story.
Academy-award winning actor Mark Rylance is perhaps best known for bringing history to life as Thomas Cromwell in the TV adaptation of Wolf Hall. And in 2018 when Sherwood Forest came under threat from seismic studies searching for underground oil and gas, he was determined that this treasured part of the UK's history should be protected.
Read his passionate defenceof Sherwood Forest and its most remarkable tree, the Major Oak.
For as long as anyone can remember, the Blackwell meadows provided a timeless and tranquil welcome to the County Durham market town of Darlington.
In February 2018, 200 mature native British trees were felled to make way for a new housing estate. Local people were horrified and bereaved.
Discoverhow a community in crisis is now trying to defend the remaining trees and create a new natural park for the town.
Rimrose Valley in Sefton on Merseyside was once a domestic tipping site, but in the 1990s it was reclaimed to create a beautiful natural park. Today it is loved and used regularly by the community. But in 2017 Highways England announced plans to drive a road right through it.
Find out how local people are mobilising to protect their trees and their local recreational site.
Join television presenter and author Dan Snow, also known as the 'History Guy', as he speaks with experts and artists about the benefits of trees and the crucial role they can play in the climate crisis.
If we’re going to tackle climate breakdown, we need more trees. 72% of UK land is currently used by farmers for food production, but combining trees with farming could suck carbon out of the atmosphere, and make farming more profitable, productive and sustainable.
