THE UK is about to become a whole lot greener thanks to a huge new forest being created.
For the first time in three decades, the new forest is being created with the plan to plant 20 million new trees.
The government is planting its first National Forest in 30 years as promised in their manifesto.
The Western Forest is the first of three planned new National Forests around the UK.
The site will stretch from the to the and by 2030 will have 2,500 hectares of new woodland and tree habitats.
All the work will be spearheaded by the Forest of Avon and supported by a five-year investment of £7.5million from the government.
It will span over 200 square miles across , Leicestershire and Staffordshire.
The government hopes to reach a target of 16.5 per cent of woodland cover in by 2050 with 20 million trees.
The aim is that the forest will bring woodland much closer to urban areas like , and too.
Other reasons for creating the forest are to stop the decline of species and reach legal environmental targets in the UK.
Mary Creagh, the UK’s nature minister said: “We will plant 20 million trees in the Western Forest to bring nature closer to people, prevent flooding and support wildlife.”
The last forest to be planted in the UK was in the Midlands in the 1990s.
Trees were first planted in 1991 and at the time, it became the country's first new forest in more than a thousand years.
In 1991, only six per cent of the Midlands area had forest cover, fast-forward to now and that figure is 20 per cent.
This provides green spaces for the surrounding four towns, upon Trent, Swadlincote, Coalville and .
One of the other proposed forests is the Northern Forest.
As the name suggests, this forest will be further north and will encompass five community forests.
The proposals suggest it will run the width of , from and Chester to the coastline of the East Riding of .
This would include the cities of , , and .
Currently, the area has just eight per cent of tree coverage – which is one of the lowest proportions in the UK.
The third new forest site will also be in the north, called the Great Forest.
Rather than one forest block like the other two, this will become a wooded county with trees dotted around Northumberland.
There is .
And in , .
