Ted Green, an adviser to the Queen who was awarded an OBE recently for services to ancient trees, said state cash was needed because of trees' landscape and cultural importance.
"These trees are old archives of gene banks," said Green. "They are reservoirs of resistance — that is why they are still standing."
He told a conference for Wealden District Council recently: "It is important to allow them to go through the natural ageing process and not tidy them away."
Chris Hannington, Wealden District Council's landscape and biodiversity officer, said: "There are many threats to the survival of ancient trees.
"Poor management, inappropriate tree surgery and global warming are all important issues affecting them."
Wealden's ancient trees are among the largest concentrations in northern Europe and were surveyed recently by Wealden ancient tree survey officer Ali Wright.
Of the 24,000 recorded ancient trees in the UK nearly 1,000 of them — 4% — were in Wealden. These included yew trees that could be 1,000 years old.
Wealden District Council is currently consulting on a set of guidelines to encourage developers to preserve veteran trees.
All Comments
Perhaps the best way of protecting ancient trees would be to expand and develop the present TPO system. In many counties this is largely ineffectual for reasons known to most, I'm sure.
But if the system was made part of the ordinary planning control process it would mean that all applications to to fell a protected tree would have to be debated by the local councillors. At least this would ensure that the public would have the chance to be aware of what trees were in danger.
The penalties for illegal felling could then be made severe enough to ensure that developers would find it uncommercial to break the law. The penalties could be imposed by central government, thus avoiding local manipulation of the system.
I just don't believe that encouraging developers to preserve veteran trees will do much. How many of them, and their staff, are trained to assess a tree's worth? How many want to? I know two developers who literally know an oak from an ash, but that's all.
Ted Green is absolutely right. We have more ancient trees than any other country in Western Europe. They are part of our heritage and deserve equal respect and treatment to old buildings. They could hold an important answer in their genetic database to the damage that global warming will undoubtedly inflict on our tree stock.
Ted is absolutely right. I was rep for the Countryside Commission back in 1994/5 on the Veteran Tree Initiative run by English Nature - it is disappointing that we don't seem to have moved on much since then. Apart from their botanic and genetic importance veteran trees are also incredibly inspiring to see and touch.