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During autumn 2011 contractors working for Warwick District Council carried out some major woodland management work at Oakley Wood. This page explains what we were doing, and why.
What we did?
We removed a proportion of the trees throughout most of woodland. Overall we took out about 30% of the trees, concentrating on those that were poor specimens or were impeding the growth of better trees.
The usable timber was removed from site and used for a variety of purposes, including milling into planks for joinery and carpentry, making fence posts, firewood, bedding for horses and chip for wood fired boilers.
Brash and smaller timber was stacked on site to rot down, where it will provide a valuable habitat for woodland wildlife.
Why did we do this?
 When woodland is planted the young trees are planted close together in order to encourage them to grow up. As they grow bigger they become too densely packed to continue to grow healthily, so every so often a proportion of them have to be removed to allow the rest to continue growing well. This work, known as thinning, had not been carried out in Oakley Wood for many years and as a result the health of the wood as a whole was suffering.
Not only does thinning help the remaining trees grow on, it also helps the rest of the woodland eco-system. Allowing more light to get to the ground will benefit woodland flowers and shrubs. Some of the cut stumps will grow back as low coppice, introducing an additional layer that provides important habitat for some wildlife. Having a woodland with several layers (eg ground, shrub and canopy) is known as structural diversity and is important for maximising habitat value.
Oakley Wood has been continuously wooded for many centuries, which makes it an important ecological site. However, in the mid 20th century many of the native trees that had made up the bulk of the wood, such as oak and ash, were removed. They were replaced with fast growing conifers that are not native to Warwickshire. These trees are not as good for local wildlife and in the long term the dense shade that they cast and the acidic needles could damage the other flora in the wood, such as the bluebells and anemones that carpet it in spring.
The Council’s long term aim is to return Oakley Wood to be a being a native wood. This work is the first phase in that programme.
Why now?
Very little management had taken place in Oakley Wood in the past few decades, and as a result the trees were packed densely and not growing as well as they could. It was important that we addressed this problem sooner rather than later.
The timing of the work was carefully chosen to minimise the impact on the woodland and the wildlife that lives there. The work took place after the end of bird nesting season so as not to affect birds too much. The ground was relatively hard (we were very lucky with the dry weather) which helped keep ground damage from machinery to a minimum. And the important spring flowers such as bluebells were dormant so the impact on them was minimized.
Why use big machines?
Because Oakley Wood had been undermanaged for so long we needed to remove a lot of timber - about 2,500 tonnes. The window for doing this work whilst minimising other impacts was relatively narrow. We could only harvest this quantity of timber in the time available if we used mechanical harvesters. Moving through the work quickly also reduces the amount of time that access to parts of the wood had to be restricted. Furthermore, these machines are much more efficient than using chainsaws. If we didn't use machinery it would not be economically viable to do the work at all.
An added advantage of mechanical harvesters is that they are actually much quieter than chainsaws. This reduced the impact of the work on the tranquility of the crematorium.
The machines used, a harvester to fell and cut the trees and a forwarder to move the timber to the loading bay, are specifically made for work in woodland. They have specially wide tyres to reduce the ground pressure and minimise the damage the woodland floor.
In later stages of the management plan, once the initial job of bringing the wood back into management has been done, we will be looking at other approaches for smaller scale work, including using horses to move felled timber and working with volunteers and local agrictultural colleges to provide training opportunities.
The background
Oakley Wood is a 47ha (about 116 acres) woodland to the south of Leamington Spa, near Bishops Tachbrook. It is what is known as a “Plantation on Ancient Woodland Site” (PAWS), which means that the site has been continuously wooded since at least 1600, but that the traditional native trees have been replaced with plantation trees more recently. Oakley Wood has seen very little management in recent decades.
The Council purchased Oakley Wood in 2008. During 2009 extensive consultation was undertaken with the community about the future of the wood. As a result of this the Council adopted a management plan, with the vision for the wood being:
“Oakley Wood is to be perpetuated for future generations as a prominent and attractive woodland feature within the local landscape, whilst over time becoming increasingly naturalistic in its composition and structure and thereby heightening its biodiversity value. The woodland is to be made available as a local resource for informal low impact recreational and educational use and management is to recognise and reflect the woodland as a renewable natural resource”
The thinning work is the first phase of implementing the management plan and aims to bring this woodland back into active management and start it on the road towards the long term aim of reverting it back to native woodland.
There is more information on Oakley Wood and the council's management plan for the wood available from the main Oakley Wood webpage.
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