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Action Plan 2021-25

The White Rose Action Plan 2021-25 sets out our targets for tree planting and woodland creation across North and West Yorkshire over the next four years.

Seven million trees, the equivalent of 4900 football pitches or 3500 hectares, could be planted in North and West Yorkshire between 2021 and 2025, with the support of landowners and farmers, with funding from the Government’s Nature for Climate fund.

You can download a PDF of the full Action Plan here: White Rose Forest Action Plan 2021-25.

Action Plan front cover

This Action Plan requires a significant acceleration of tree planting rates in North and West Yorkshire. We will focus on supporting projects that maximise community benefit within our two strategic planting programmes: Landscapes for Water and Green Streets®.

Through our Landscapes for Water programme we aim to have established 2500 hectares of new tree canopy in our priority river catchments – the Calder, Aire and SUNO (the Rivers Swale, Ure, Nidd and Ouse) by 2025.

For our Green Streets® programme we aim to have planted 1000 hectares of new tree canopy, or 2 million trees, in our urban areas and along major transport routes by 2025.

White Rose Forest strategic planting programmes diagram

United Bank of Carbon report – Informing a carbon-based tree planting strategy for the White Rose Forest

Tree planting at Gorpley Reservoir

Research by the White Rose Forest partnership suggests that North and West Yorkshire has the capacity to increase tree canopy cover from 11% (recorded in 2018) to 19% by 2050. This would mean planting approximately 160 million trees over the next 29 years.

We therefore commissioned the United Bank of Carbon (UBoC) team at the University of Leeds to scientifically assess how much CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere by tree planting in North and West Yorkshire. This will inform our planning and goals between 2025 and 2050.

A summary of the UBoC report findings can be downloaded here as a PDF: UBoC report summary – Informing a carbon-based tree planting strategy for the White Rose Forest.

The full report is available on the UBoC website.

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