The Continuous Cover Forestry Scheme provides financial support to help forest owners manage their woodland in a way that opens up the canopy and creates new habitats for wildlife. The scheme helps to create an uneven canopy structure with the aim of producing high quality, high value logs.
These objectives are met through:
- improvement felling of poorer quality trees
- felling of additional trees to release potential frame trees
- pruning to improve stem quality
- thinning or re-spacing to promote growth and management and re-spacing of natural regeneration
Continuous Cover Forestry is an alternative forest management approach where the forest canopy is maintained at one or more levels without clearfelling. The distinctive element of Continuous Cover Forestry is the avoidance of clearfelling areas greater than 0.25 ha, or more than two tree heights wide without the retention of some mature trees.