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A veteran tree is one that has ancient features but not the great age of an ancient tree, and is a tree of great cultural, landscape, or biodiversity value due to its ecological and habitat features.
Ancient trees often have features of particularly high nature conservation value, such as dead limbs, hollows, rot holes, water pools, seepages, woodpecker holes, splits, loose bark, limbs reaching the ground, and epiphytic plants and . Higher Level Stewardship: Part B, Farm Environment Plan Features Manual, Second Edition, pp 121–124. Natural England, October 2008, Few of these features are found on younger trees, and they provide and foraging grounds for many species of animals and fungi, some of which are rare. Such features are sometimes removed or damaged by pruning or other aboriculture practices.
Ancient trees can be found in various locations, from dense woodlands to hedgerows, village greens, and ancient parks and wood pastures. They thrive in a variety of settings, such as dense woodland, but are more commonly found as , on , and in ancient and other .
Many of the oldest trees are Pollarding, which is a method of heavily pruning trees by cutting the tree above the browse height of animals. This cultural practice has mostly died out in the UK, except for street trees.
Although some initiatives have strict rules on how to measure the girth and use GPS devices to document the location of such trees accurately, other schemes rely on members of the public to report large trees. The public has been encouraged to hug big trees in their area to get a measure of their size and report their findings to Natural England or another veteran tree organization. 19th-century maps are also being used to find old trees in places such as Cambridgeshire.
Existing prominent trees were often used as survey points indicating boundaries of both private and government land tenure. Some trees hold an exalted position because they were marked ( blazed) by 19th-century explorers.
Australia does not have the history of commons and parkland that help explain these landscape forms elsewhere. The new settlers did however bring with them an appreciation of the value of trees for fuel, fodder, and raw material for building; many of them also showed an appreciation of the amenity value of trees, planting large spreading shade trees on their properties and within their new founded towns and cities.
Many of the ancient trees identified today reflect previous patterns of settlement, showing the economic, cultural, and social organizations influencing the lives of those living on the land. They often display the physical scars of traumatic events both man-made and natural. A tree like this is said to have been veteranized.
There is legislation (in the form of national, state, and local laws) that recognizes the importance of protecting the environment, but activists have identified gaps in the protection afforded veteran trees, particularly in the face of ever-increasing pressures of urban development.
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