The Wokingham District Veteran Tree Survey
Background
Tree 1974
Oak in Matthewsgreen
The survey is a project to map as many veteran and other significant trees as possible in the towns of Wokingham, Earley and Woodley and the 14 parishes in the wider district. It was funded initially by a generous grant from the Wokingham Society and supported by the Wokingham District (now Borough) Council who commissioned help from the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers (BTCV). Grants to assist the project have also been made by town and parish councils, the National Lottery Awards for All scheme, the Thames Valley Environmental Records Centre (TVERC) and BTCV.
Although the WDVTA was formed in January 2007, volunteers had already started surveying Wokingham's veteran trees in the previous year and nearly a thousand trees had been recorded by the end of the Association's first year. By the end of 2010, over 4000 trees had been surveyed and their details recorded in the WDVTA database.
Training surveyors
Volunteers
The survey aims to record all veteran trees in the Wokingham district, which includes all the parishes in the Borough. It is carried out entirely by volunteers, most of whom are members of the WDVTA. No special skills are needed, although we do ask volunteers to take a short training course so they can become familiar with the techniques, equipment and forms that we use.
Most of our volunteers work in pairs but it's not essential. There are advantages to working with a partner - it's quicker that way and mistakes are less likely. It can be more convenient too because there are a number of items surveyors have to carry around with them.
Co-ordinators
Each parish has a co-ordinator whose responsibility is to manage the survey activities and support the parish's volunteers. The co-ordinator's tasks include:
- allocating areas within the parish for survey
- issuing identity cards - these are needed in case surveyors are challenged when surveying
- looking after the health and safety aspects of surveying
- making sure the surveyors have all they need to do the recording - equipment and knowledge
- collecting the survey results
- checking the results and submitting the files to the data manager
- representing the interests and views of surveyors to the WDVTA Committee
Surveying
WDVTA surveyor's kit
Surveying is not difficult; it is a good way to get to know Wokingham and it can be great fun! It does, however, need care and attention to detail. The Surveyor's Handbook gives all the information a surveyor might need, covering topics such as:
- measuring a tree (especially those with funny shapes)
- using the recording forms
- taking and submitting photographs
- grid references and GPS devices
- estimating the age of a tree
The co-ordinator assigns an area of the parish to each pair of volunteer recorders and marks up a map showing the area to be surveyed, together with any additional information such as roads or field boundaries so the volunteers know exactly what area they have been given. As well as the map, they also need a flexible tape, a GPS handheld to record the grid reference, a camera and a clipboard. The WDVTA has some GPSs and tape measures that can be lent out to those who don't have their own.
The recorders then look for trees that qualify as 'veterans', namely
- having a girth of at least 3 metres
- contributing value to the landscape
- having historical or botanical interest
- being clearly of great age, even though its girth may be less than 3 metres
On finding a tree of interest, the recorders note its details on the recording sheet. The information recorded includes
- Ordnance Survey grid reference, preferably using a GPS device.
- a textual description of its location
- species
- girth and height at which the girth was measured
- condition - whether healthy, dying, pollarded etc.
- habitat - whether anything is living in or on the tree - such as bats, fungi etc.
- setting - roadside, hedgerow, parkland, etc.
- photographs
Typically, it takes about 10 minutes to record the details of a tree.
The next page describes the processing of survey data and updating,
correcting and verifying database records.
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