WOODLAND

… there’s no substitute for an ancient tree, or an ancient anything else. Big old trees are the “keystone structures” of forests, on which many other species depend. The very trees that foresters have tended to weed out – forked, twisted, lightning-struck, rotten, dead – are those that harbour the most life…

Bats shelter in splits in the trunk. Forks hold tiny pools of water or pockets of soil. Jagged wounds where limbs have sheared, burrs and excrescences, scrapes from which resin bubbles, ivy, vines, lichens and mosses, tangles of twigs and derelict nests, peeling bark and fire scars are all crucial wildlife habitats”

George Monbiot