Climate change: Cornwall Council reveals £30m forest plan

Cornwall Council said it plans to increase canopy cover in Cornwall by planting more trees

A council has revealed a plan to create a 20,000-acre forest costing up to £30m to help tackle climate change.

A "Forest for Cornwall" is the flagship project in Cornwall Council's climate change and carbon-neutral action plan.

The authority has been drawing up the plan since declaring a climate emergency in January, with the aim of becoming carbon neutral by 2030.

Next week the council's cabinet will be asked to approve the action plan.

Earlier this month researchers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said that if the world wanted to limit the rise in temperatures to 1.5C by 2050, an extra 1bn hectares (2.4bn acres) of trees would be needed.

Cornwall Council's 63-page climate change action plan includes a number of measures that the council intends to implement but planting trees is at the heart of it, the Local Democracy Service (LDRS) has reported.

It states: "We will develop a mass woodland tree planting programme - once fully developed a Forest for Cornwall - covering approximately 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) ... or about 2% of Cornwall's land mass."

The trees would be planted "on our streets, in our hedgerows and through the creation of new woodlands and forested areas", it continues.

The report states the estimated cost of the forest would be between £25m and £30m and bids were being prepared for government-supported national tree planting schemes.