The Woodland Trust’s State of the UK’s Woods and Trees 2025, published in June 2025, is the most comprehensive assessment of UK woodland health since the organisation’s landmark 2021 report.
Woodland cover stands at 13.5% of the UK’s land surface. This is up from 13.2% in 2021 with urban canopy cover standing at is 19.3%. UK woodlands store an estimated one billion tonnes of carbon. These facts demonstrate progress, but Between 2020 and 2024, the UK planted less than half the area of new woodland it had set as its annual target and at the current rate of planting, the UK will not meet its own legal target of 16.5% woodland cover by 2050. Increasing cover alone has not reversed biodiversity decline: woodland butterfly populations have fallen 47% since 1990, woodland birds 37% since 1970 – both larger declines than those recorded in the 2021 report.
Since 1990, 21 serious pests and pathogens (organisms that cause disease, eg a fungus, bacterium or virus) have been introduced to UK woodland. Managing just six of them costs the UK economy an estimated £920 million per year.
The report calls for the current rate of woodland creation to be tripled, for existing woodland to be better managed, and for new planting to be more closely connected to existing habitats. Urban trees and woodland are identified as critical for public health and wellbeing.
Source: Woodland Trust, State of the UK’s Woods and Trees 2025