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by kieranmaine 2547 days ago
Any idea which UK charities would be the best to contribute to to get tree coverage up as quickly as possible? I've looked at the woodland trust, but equally I'm thinking that in terms of reducing CO2 my money might be more effective being deployed in another country.
4 comments

Yeah I have struggled with this in the past. I would gladly pay to go and plant trees somewhere within a couple of hours of where I live, but I could not find many easy ways to do this as an individual in the UK (unless you are a kid under 11 years old where there seems to be a lot of options!). I donate to Woodland Trust, but they seem to be more about maintaining what we have & small-scale replenishing rather than more large-scale replanting.

Most recently I've been trying to offset 10 tonnes a year via these people: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/carbonoffset.html They were the only people I could find most recently that sold "personal carbon offsets" in the UK which includes UK-based tree planting (as well as options for elsewhere)

There is Trees for Life in Scotland:

https://treesforlife.org.uk/

Edit: Most of the Scottish Highlands are a particularly bizarre landscape that people generally think of as natural but is really rather artificial as deer, lacking natural predators and being popular for hunting, tend to eat young trees.

Bit like Dartmoor - looks spectacularly wild and romantic, but used to be forested until Bronze Age farmers cleared it for agriculture and the soil turned acidic.
The Lakes and the Peaks are in the same boat too, probably the other national parks.
It would be fantastic if it could be re-planted with trees.
I wish I had enough cash to purchase a chunk of pasture and reforest it, but everywhere in the SE is stupidly expensive I think. Possibly moving up north soon, so I may well purchase an acre of two if I can. I'd want to be near enough to be able to keep an eye on it.