Classification of woods

• The majority of woodland on the inventory that still remains was classified as Long-established* (73.9 per cent by area)

• Only 0.04 per cent of Northern Ireland is covered by woodland that can be viewed with any certainty as ancient, classified as Ancient (1 or 2). These woods account for only 5.5 per cent of surviving woodland on the inventory, and cover only 543 hectares.

• Around a fifth of the surviving woodland on the inventory (20.6 per cent by area) was classified as Ancient (3), equivalent to a further 0.15 per cent of Northern Ireland’s land area. Many of these keyed out in this category because of a lack of historical evidence, but still supported more species associated with ancient woodland than the threshold for woods of their size.

• By comparison, woodland on the ancient woodland inventories for the rest of the UK covers around two per cent of the land area.

*Definitions of the different antiquity classifications are available here