Veteran Tree Care & Evaluations

Veteran tree care & evaluations

Contact Coastal Tree Consultancy to find out more.
A veteran tree is a tree with habitat features such as wounds or decay. Ancient veterans are ancient trees, not all veterans are old enough to be ancient. A veteran may be a young tree with a relatively small girth in contrast to an ancient tree, but bearing the ‘scars’ of age such as decay in the trunk, branches or roots, fungal fruiting bodies, or dead wood. The veteran tree still provides valuable and diverse wildlife habitat. These habitat features typically start to appear in the mature, pre-ancient stage and also in traditional pollards. These trees are important in our landscape and provide a huge biodiversity resource.
Veteran trees
Threats to ancient trees
Ancient trees are sometimes threatened by plans to fell or cut them harshly – for example on development sites or on misguided health and safety grounds.
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has recently been amended to help protect these valuable individual trees and ancient woodlands, paragraph 175 of the NPPF states:
175. When determining planning applications, local planning authorities should apply the following principles:
(c) development resulting in the loss or deterioration of irreplaceable habitats (such as ancient woodland and ancient or veteran trees) should be refused, unless there are wholly exceptional reasons 58 and a suitable compensation strategy exists, and
(d) development whose primary objective is to conserve or enhance biodiversity should be supported; while opportunities to incorporate biodiversity improvements in and around developments should be encouraged, especially where this can secure measurable net gains for biodiversity.

We can help by identifying and surveying veteran or ancient trees, prescribing management both in terms of pruning of the tree, site management and longer-term care.
More information about veteran trees can be found on the Ancient Tree Forum website: http://www.ancienttreeforum.co.uk/
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