Trafford's Green Recovery Challenge

sunny woodland

Image by City of Trees

Trafford's Green Recovery Challenge

About the project

PROJECT TITLE: Trafford's Green Recovery Challenge

LOCATION: Trafford

FUNDING: Awarded £117,082 from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund

PARTNERS: City of Trees and The Conservation Volunteers

The idea

This project will work to manage and restore a young Community Forest plantation in Sale Water Park, Trafford, for the benefit of people and breeding birds included the red-listed willow tit.

The project will focus on varying the age and species structure of trees and shrubs within the woods and planting to increase abundance and variety of herb and shrub layer species within the wood. Creation of resting and standing deadwood will benefit various Red and Amber list bird species associated with woods in Greater Manchester.

The Conservation Volunteers will also use the conservation story of the willow tit to engage volunteers and people with additional needs, increasing their health and wellbeing through participation in practical outdoor activities.

Through the use of improved signage, paths, maps and online maps/information, the funding will help to take a disconnected suite of woodlands and allow people to make the connection that they are part of coherent landscape scale ecological corridor, which they are now able to navigate through.

This project is needed as Trafford Council do not currently have the resources to provide the one-off impetus that this project will provide. These maturing plantations and naturally regenerating woodland require thinning and diversification in order to stop them becoming dominated by a few species and being overrun with invasive non-native species.