Forest
Ennerdale's forest is one of the valleys Big Four features along with its Mountains, Lake and Rivers. The management of the forest is aimed at allowing it to develop as a more diverse habitat with a dynamic mosaic of mixed species, open glades, dense patches, cathedral sized big trees, deadwood, open woodland, windblown trees and of course wildlife and people.
The Wild Ennerdale Partners have a future natural approach to managing the forest. This accepts that the future forest will be a mix of native and non native species as to remove all the non native species would have a significantly negative impact on much of the valleys wildlife which use conifers for shelter and food.
The forest includes three areas of temperate rainforest in Side Wood, Mart Knott and Latterbarrow. Also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforest, this special habitat is incredibly rare. In fact, it's thought to be more threatened than tropical rainforest. Its lush conditions are perfect for scarce plants, lichens and fungi, as well as remarkable birds and mammals.
More information about the management of the forest.
The Ennerdale forest is dominated by even aged non native conifers, mostly Sitka spruce. Our vision for the valley sees the dominance of Sitka spruce reducing over time and encouraging a more native species diverse forest to develop. The majority of the felling we do is to reduce the number of Sitka spruce trees and make space for the planting of native species. Much of the felling we completed during 2020 and 2021 was in the valley bottom between the two roads at the east end of the valley. This was aimed at opening up the River Liza riparian corridor to allow more diverse species and woodland structure to develop. We have been planting Scots pine, Juniper, Eared willows, Aspen, Silver and Downy birch and Rowan in this area as the seed source for the future forest.
The felling carried out between 2023 and 2026 has been drive by Forestry England responding to plant health notices because of Phytophthora larch disease. The felled areas whilst much large than planned do provide the opportunity to plant more native tree species.
Forestry England replant felled areas with native trees, non native trees haven't been planted in the valley for more than 20 years now. Where the site is easy to access and thought likely to be practically and economically viable in the future Forestry England will plant at a productive density. Typically these sites are found in the western and middle valley. On these sites Forestry England plant with a mix of Scots pine, Sessile oak, Aspen and Silver birch at a stocking density of around 2500 to 3000 trees per hectare as this rate produces the best quality timber. On less productive steep rocky sites a more open clumpy variable density mix of Juniper, Mountain willow, Rowan, Aspen, Downy birch and Alder are planted. These sites tend to be towards the eastern end of the valley.
At the western end of the valley United Utilities have been planting native trees in the fields leading either side of the River Ehen.
Phytophthora Larch Disease Tree Felling 2025/26 - Updated 02/01/2026
Forestry England is responding to Phytophthora larch disease having been issued with Plant Health Notices to fe/ll or kill standing larch across three sites in the Ennerdale valley./
Broadmoor.
Tree felling and extraction in Broadmoor has completed and the forest, footpath and Coast to Coast route are now fully reopened again. see the onsite visitor information poster. Please look out for timber lorries. Over winter 2025-26 a team will fell or kill standing the remaining individual and isolated larch trees. Forestry England's post harvesting plan is to allow the felled areas to regenerate naturally with native species and enrich this with some Scots pine which is the Red squirrels preferred food source.. There are already oak and birch seedlings appearing and many of the cut birch and willow stumps are already coppicing back. Currently the brash mats used by the harvesting machinery to protect the ground prevent seed fall reaching the soil across around 40% of the site. To overcome this, Forestry England plan to remove these brash mats in 2026. The brash will be chipped and sent to a mill at Penrith where the chips will be used in equestian and horticultural products.
Latterbarrow
Tree felling and extraction is continuing in Latterbarrow just north of Ennerdale YHA. Please avoid this area and the forest road through the site which are closed to public access. Please see the which is posted around the main entrances to the site. In common with Broadmoor the brash from the site will be removed during 2026 to make space for natural regeneration and native tree planting.
Silvercove
Tree felling and extraction has completed in Silvercove, the area is open to public access. Please look out for brash debris and areas of mud. Forestry England will reinstate the surface of the rights of way through the site. The site is being left for natural regeneration.
Falling trees are very dangerous and so are the felling and extraction machines. If a machine's saw chain breaks, metal can shoot through the forest like a bullet. Harvesting machines operate long hours including late night, early mornings and at weekends. Please, look out for timber lorries and follow instructions on signage and the advice of banks persons where they are managing public safety.
Phytophthora Larch Felling 2025 - Background
Forestry England is working on responding to the Phytophthora larch disease in Ennerdale. They have received plant health notices and developed plans for tree felling across three sites: Broadmoor, Silver Cove, and Latterbarrow, shown orange on the map (click to enlarge).
Timeline:
- Silver Cove: Felling and extraction started in mid February and will continue into Spring 2025.
- Broadmoor & Latterbarrow: Felling and extraction will start in early 2025 and continue into summer 2025.
Details for Each Site:
The Plant Health Notices provide formal approval to fell only larch trees. The felling of non larch species requires a formal amendment to the Wild Ennerdale Stewardship Plan.
- Silver Cove: For the most part only the diseased larch trees will be cut down. A small insignificant area of spruce will be felled. No formal change to the Wild Ennerdale Stewardship Plan is needed.
- Broadmoor & Latterbarrow: Larch and non-larch trees (mostly Sitka spruce) will be cut down, so a formal change to the Wild Ennerdale Stewardship Plan is needed. The larch is so intermixed with the spruce that its not possible to fell only the larch or doing so would leave the remaining trees unstable.
You can also look at the Felling Overview Maps for more information about the plans for each site.
Consultation:
Forestry England has consulted a range of local and regional consultees about all three sites. The proposal is open for public comment on the Forestry Commissions Public Register until 20th December 2024.
Timber Haulage :
- No haulage during school runs, weekends, or bank holidays.
- Speed limits: 25 mph to/from A5086 and the forest, 10 mph through Croasdale.
Visitor Information:
- Rights of way through Broadmoor and Silver Cove will be closed and diverted during periods of tree felling and extraction..
- Updates will be provided on the Wild Ennerdale and Forestry England webpages , as well as around live harvesting sites and at main valley entrances.
More Information about the Phytophthora larch disease.
More information about Phytophthora larch disease can be found on the Forest Research website
Forestry England could leave the infected trees standing but they would have to be killed using a stem herbicide application to meet the requirements of the Plant Health Notice. This option is used where the trees are difficult to access or where felling would damage neighbouring non larch species or felling would leave the remianing non larch trees more at risk of being blown over in a storm. Felling and extracting the trees is the preferred option as the timber can be sold and typically this operation generate a surplus where as killing trees standing is a wholly cost operation.
Forestry England is responsible for getting the best value for money in its management of the Nations Forests. Leaving the felled trees and not extracting them is a significant cost operation compared to making a small surplus from felling and extracting them.
In addition there are other reasons for extracting the timber.
- Much of the the timber is converted into boards and beams for use in the construction industry where it locks up the carbon in it for many decades inside buildings and houses. Left on site the timber will rot releasing the carbon locked up in it back the atmosphere.
- Leaving the timber not extracted will physically prevent access to replant the felled areas with native trees and the biodiversity gains that the future woodlands would bring.
- As a country we are the second largest importer of timber by percentage in the world so producing our own timber saves the carbon emissions from timber being transported to the UK.
- Extracting and despatching timber to sawmills supports businesses and employment.
Timber haulage from Ennerdale follows the agreed route to and from Bowness Knott via Croasdale, Ennerdale Bridge, Kirkland and A5086 south of Lamplugh Cross. This is highlighted red on the Timber Transport Forum Map. This plan was led by Cumbria County Council and widely consulted with Parish Councils and other organisations. Typically when timber harvesting in Ennerdale the average number of lorry movements a day is around 5 and around 75% of timber lorry movements happen on days when no more than 8 lorry movements occur. ( A lorry movement counts the journey in and the journey out separately). Also 70% of lorry movements occur before 10am before the majority of those visiting the valley arrive.
Forestry England met with the Parish Council and Cumbria County Council Highways in January 2022 and having listened to the concerns expressed has incorporated the following voluntary commitments within all future timber harvesting contracts :-
- There will be no timber despatch on weekends or bank holidays.
- Timber lorries will be limited to a maximum speed of 25mph between the A5086 and Ennerdale Forest with a lower 10mph speed limit through Croasdale. On forest roads timber lorries along with all vehicles are limited to a 15mph speed limit.
- Timber hauliers will avoid Ennerdale Bridge school opening and closing times to reduce congestion . During these exclusion periods lorries will wait on the A5086 or in the wide section of road beside Broadmoor.
- Forestry England will install temporary highways specification metal signs along the length of the timber haulage route to warn road users that timber lorries are using the road.
Once the larch is felled, it will not be replanted. Remaining larch areas will be monitored for further disease. Forestry England will first watch to see whether the sites regenerate naturally. If they don’t, the areas will be replanted with native species such as Scots pine, sessile oak, aspen, willow and juniper. Birch and rowan are expected to return on their own but may be added where needed.Some spruce may regenerate and will be left unless it becomes dominant, in which case it will be thinned or removed when practical. Any regenerating larch will be monitored for disease and cleared if infected.
Where future timber extraction is viable, planting will use native species at a density suitable for timber production. In more challenging areas, where extraction is unlikely to be economic, the aim will be to create a more open native woodland with scrub species such as juniper and mountain willows. On the south facing slopes around Latterbarrow temperate rainforest the felled areas will be enriched with native species to encourage the temperate rainforest to expand.
The wildlife and nature of Ennerdale are really special to all the Wild Ennerdale Partners. Forestry England has no plans to fell large areas of larch but is required to so in response to an outbreak of Phytophthora larch disease. For each of the Phytophthora larch felling areas Forestry England has carried out a Squirrel Impact Assessment. To protect the wildlife using the larch forest the forest is surveyed (if not too dense) before felling to identify any trees with squirrel dreys or bird nests. These trees are left standing and felled after the breeding seasons or where safe killed standing and left as dead wood. Additional larch trees are also left standing to give squirrels a route to and from other areas of non larch trees. From long-term squirrel monitoring it is known that larch is not a preferred food source for red Squirrels which will still have large areas of conifer seed to feed on. The large area of felling on Latterbarrow is of you trees which are too young to cone so whilst the forest habitat is lost the felling doesnt reduce the area of food available for red squirrels.
To control grey squirrels Forestry England will continue its annual monitoring and grey squirrel control. Whilst areas of mature forest will be lost, some new open and scrub habitats will appear which will provide other species such as butterflies and birds with new habitat opportunities. Some of the larch areas have an understorey of native broadleaf and scrub species which will provide the starting point for future woodland habitats
Yes the Phytophthora disease doesn't affect the larch timber so it can be used in construction, fencing, pallets and woodfuel. Sawmills have to run infected timber separate to uninfected timber and then thoroughly clean and disinfect after a run of infected timber. The majority of the timber from the larch felling will be supplied to mills in Cumbria.
Yes during 2013 and 2014 around 100 hectares of larch trees in the valley were affected by Phytophthora ramorum larch disease. To reduce the spread of this disease and risk that it may jump into another species Forestry England is required to fell infected trees or kill them standing. In the first outbreak the forest industry judged the felling of the trees to be uneconomic so much of the infected areas were killed standing using a herbicide stem treatment method. This has left some large areas of standing deadwood which has become a valuable habitat for wildlife species that specialise in using deadwood habitats. To protect public safety buffer zones alongside public rights of way and forest roads were felled and left as lying deadwood.
A second outbreak of Phytophthora was identified in summer 2021 with harvesting work starting in September 2022 running through to March 2023. In total around 60 hectares was felled including all the larch between Bowness Knott car park and east of the Irish Bridge. See ennerdale harvesting and civil engineering visitor info map 09-2022
Whilst we were sad to lose the larch trees the forest is regenerating underneath the dead trees. Forestry England have planted over 50,000 native trees under the areas of treated larch since 2014 and will continue to underplant trees until the forest is fully regenerated. Annual squirrel monitoring shows that although dead, the larch trees are still being used by squirrels as a route around the forest as the search for food..
Phytophthora Larch Disease 2021-23
During Summer and Autumn 2021 Phytophthora Ramorum was identified across 60 hectares of larch forest at the west end of the Ennerdale valley. To help control the spread of the disease and reduce the risk of a variant jumping into another tree or shrub species Forestry England is required to fell or kill standing the infected trees.
Given this is a significant change from the Wild Ennerdale Stewardship Plan, Forestry England shared their proposals via a Citizen Space web page and asked for feedback. The consultation period has completed but you can still download a PDF document outlining their plans via the webpage.
Forestry England received 11 responses to their public engagement regarding the upcoming Phytophthora Ramorum plant heath felling in Ennerdale. Not all these responses raised questions, and some questions were duplicates of others.
Responses requiring a reply are summarised and anonymised in this Ennerdale Public Engagement Responses 2022 document
Larch Felling 2022-23
Tree felling and harvesting work started in Ennerdale in August 2022 and finished in March 2023 . This work was in response to the Phytophthora larch disease outbreak and was aimed at reducing the spread of the disease which in addition to trees can affect other species including bilberry. We will monitor the remaining larch areas over the coming months to see if the disease has spread over the Autumn and Winter. If it has we will have to plan another period of tree felling.
Over the next couple of years the areas of larch felled in response to the Phytophthora larch disease outbreak will be re-established through a mix of natural regeneration and planting with native species.
Dead Wood
Dead wood is an important indicator of biodiversity providing habitats for animals, insects, lichen, mosses, bryophytes and fungi. It also helps to store water and improves soil chemistry. Over summer 2013, Jenny Woodman , a student from Newcastle University carried out an investigation into the levels of dead wood in Ennerdale. Jenny discovered that in the plantation conifer forest dead wood was around 18m3 per hectare. Compare this to the ancient woodland of Side Wood where Jenny found the figure is just over 70m3 per hectare.
Jenny’s data compares favourably to guidelines suggested by the Forestry Commission of 40-100m3 within ancient semi-natural woodlands like Side Wood and 20-40m3 within managed plantations and secondary woodlands.
