Before exploring what are woodland management plans, it would be interesting to know what does it mean by woodland. Woodland in United Kingdom means forests comprised of native Oak and Ash woodlands to coniferous forests planted for timber production. Woodland management plans are basically plans that promote commercial timber production, game, conservation and recreation, or any combination of these. Woodlands can be of many types, structure, age and biodiversity.
Depending upon the needs of managers, ecology consultants give proper advice in this area. Since, driven by its nature of expanding relentlessly, the priorities of the manager change. At a place where there are many woodlands, woodland managment plans may be in conflict as they can be having multipurposes to get managed.
Traditional native woodland managment plans were able to create continuous source of wood for firewood and structural materials. Those plans were mainly involve coppicing trees within a woodland in rotation. These trees basically exploit their self-regenerating power as the tree is planted to ground level for its timber, with the remaining base left to regenerate naturally. Regeneration takes the form of multiple shoots, so that coppiced trees have a distinct growth form with several similar sized trunks.
Another dimension of conservation of biodiversity is animal diversity as they are controlled by plant diversity. This is obvious as plants are the providers of the architecture and structure of a habitat, as well as being the basis of food chains. Ecology consultants can play a great role as far as conservation of animal diversity is concerned. Also, woodland management plans can completely focus on encouraging plant diversity by ensuring that there are a variety of light levels within a woodland from deep shade to open glades. The ecology consultants also advise to plant a variety of native trees to enhance and nurture animal diversity as native trees are likel to support many more invertebrate species.
