Simon Baynes, the Member of Parliament for Clwyd South, recently chaired 2024’s first meeting of the Woods and Trees All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). Alongside Baroness Young, Trudy Harrison MP and the Earl of Leicester, they were joined by independent tree expert Russell Horsey, the Director of Trees, Science and Research at the Tree Council, Jon Stokes, and members of The Woodland Trust to discuss tree protection and tree equity in the UK.
During the meeting they discussed the launch of the Woodland Trust’s new Tree Equity Score in the UK and its potential to identify where more tree cover is needed. This is an advanced measure of tree cover in communities whereby each community is scored from high to low based upon their tree canopy cover and need for trees. The lower the score, the greater the need for trees. Simon was interested to learn about how much tree cover varies within our communities and of the associated impacts that low tree cover can have upon our health and wellbeing as well as the resilience of communities.
The Woodland Trust is doing excellent work in promoting awareness of different communities Tree Equity scores to promote their baseline goal of 30% tree canopy cover across the UK, something Simon supports wholeheartedly for Clwyd South. He was pleased to learn that most of Clwyd South has a particularly high tree equity score, including in and around Cefn Mawr (31% canopy cover), Penycae (34%) and Ruabon (35%) which are especially green.
Simon would be very grateful to hear from constituents on this and would encourage residents to visit https://uk.treeequityscore.org/map#4.78/54.14/-3.69 to find out more about Tree Equity in their communities.
