So the question is, do you have any coppice in your woodland? But now at a time of our society's dependence on plastics, rubbish mounting up in land fill and rainforest cut down to provide cheap timber, surely the sustainable harvesting of woodland produce at a local level has an incredible role to play? Coppiced areas of woodland are well documented to show a positive relationship with increasing the biodiversity of a woodland.Īfter the first and second world war and the drop in the need for charcoal and other woodland produce a lot of coppice has overgrown and been forgotten in our woodlands. Coppice & woodland management Woodland consultancy and advice Coppice rotation plans created Coppice training Managing for wildlife Grant applications. The rotation would relate to the age structure of an area of coppice stools with coppice areas being cut every 7 - 20 years depending on what the timber was needed for.Ī woodland can be made up of varying ages of coppice on different rotations these areas of coppice are called coups. Patterns of shell damage among snails from a coppice woodland in Sussex, England. Most native broadleaved species coppice, but some are stronger than others, with hazel, oak, sweet chestnut, ash, field maple and hornbeam being the trees traditionally coppiced in England. Although the immediate effects of coppicing can look quite destructive, it is actually a way of prolonging the life of the. This means regularly cutting back small areas or cants encouraging regrowth and providing timber products for traditional woodland crafts. The coppice area can be made up of many trees and is usually managed on a rotation. Coppicing, or cutting down a tree to ground-level to produce new growth, has been a way of harvesting wood and managing woodland for thousands of years. Our mission is to restore the woodland back into it’s traditional coppice cycle. One of the added benefits of coppicing within a woodland is that it promotes biodiversity. The principle of coppicing is that you harvest shoots from the stump, or stool, of a cut-down tree. stakes for fencing would be grown larger than poles for making hazel fence hurdles that need to be twisted and wound together. Coppicing, however, sees a remarkably quick return on investment, and is as traditional as could be. The age of the coppice stool when cut would depend on what the wood was needed for at the time i.e.
Coppice was cut to provide a sustainable harvest of wood for fuel, charcoal, tool handles, fencing and much more.