Keynote: Elisa Fuentes-Montemayor - A journey to nature recovery: Insights from 150 years of reforestation in the UK

Large-scale habitat creation is widely recognised as essential in combating the global biodiversity crisis, yet evidence for its effectiveness remains limited due to short study timeframes, restricted spatial scales, and narrow taxonomic focus. In this presentation, I will summarise a 13-year research programme that addresses these limitations by utilising a ‘space-for-time’ natural experiment approach to investigate the responses of 10 taxonomic groups to 150 years of reforestation across >100 sites in the United Kingdom. Through this work, we disentangle the relative effects of woodland age, size, habitat structure and landscape context (including land use legacies) on biodiversity. I will also present work comparing the ecological outcomes of reforestation approaches spanning a continuum from active to passive, including tree planting, natural colonisation (i.e. allowing trees to naturally spread into new areas) and hybrid approaches combining the two. Our findings highlight the importance of enhancing woodland structural heterogeneity and accounting for landscape context e.g. by prioritising strategic placement of woodlands to maximise biodiversity benefits and contribute to nature recovery.