About

The Sherwood Community Woodlands Forest Plan covers Bevercotes, Ollerton (East & West), Oxclose, Shirebrook & Silverhill community woodlands. All of these sites were originally colliery pit tips which have been remediated and planted with woodlands.

This is the first forest plan to cover the community woodlands, since they were afforested in the late 1990s and early 2000s. All of these sites are either leased from Nottinghamshire County Council or leases should be agreed in the near future. It is our intention to manage these sites for timber production, whilst recognising their unique locations; mostly close to local communities.

All of these sites were once the spoil tips for the collieries attached to local communities. The collieries were a major employer and their closure had a massive effect of the local area. As such the sites have a unique link with the communities they serve. This link with the local population is managed by the team of community rangers.

Objectives

The main objectives for the Sherwood Community Woodland Forest Plan are:

Economic

• Set a direction of travel for a structured programme of thinning for timber production to achieve the maximum sustainable cut whilst focussing on crop improvement, sustainability and stability.
• Highlight needs for infrastructure improvement over the 10 year plan.
• Select suitable species and appropriate silvicultural techniques to regenerate commercially productive but more structurally and species diverse and resilient forests.

Environmental

• Ensure any management is sympathetic to neighbouring SSSI.
• Identify key species and habitats and make appropriate provision for their requirements.

Social

• Diversify species composition and structure, and plan sympathetically designed and appropriately scaled interventions to improve and maintain the visual integration of the pit tips into the wider landscape.
• Recognise the location and scale of demand in making appropriate provision for public access, where there is open access woodland or public rights of way.
   
• Facilitate aims of Community teams to conduct management that furthers the integration of the pit tip sites into local communities.
• Use the Tenure section of the plan to clearly highlight our tenure and its limits on these sites.

What we’ll do

Planned operations within 10 year period of the plan are summarised below:

• Felling of 10.17ha of conifers and 5.13ha of broadleaves.
• Thinning of 359ha of conifers and 236.6ha of broadleaves.
• Restocking of 7.8ha of conifers and 4.6ha of broadleaves.
• Underplanting of 174ha of conifers.

The species composition will change from 35% conifers, 23% broadleaves and 42% open in 2018 to 34% conifers, 24% broadleaves and 42% open in 2068.

All of our forests and woodlands in this Forest District are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). All Forestry England forests and woods are independently certified as sustainably managed, to continue to benefit future generations.