AN environmental community interest company (CIC) has been planting trees around Cornwall in an effort to help increase the county's biodiversity and available habitat.

Plant One Cornwall was set up just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and are working with businesses all over the country in order to help establish woodland in Cornwall.

The group's latest endeavours have seen them plant 375 trees in Stithians and around 500 at Farm Common, outside of Porkellis.

The group claim that the idea to get started in Cornwall was inspired by the county's low tree cover due to the historical use of the area's land, with one member claiming: "All the trees are now underground holding up the crumbling tin mine or were made in to ships that have sailed away."

Ray Lewis, who along with her business partner, Carl Rowlinson, have set up the Plant One Cornwall CIC, said: "Companies come to us and they pledge a certain amount of money to go towards woodland establishment and then we get the plans to plant he trees from landowners all over Cornwall.

"So we'll go to the land, assess it to make sure it's suitable for tree planting and see how biodiverse it it.

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"We've had to say no to a couple of places as they're already a biodiverse habitat and we don't want to come along and just bulldoze it.

"We try and stay as ecologically responsible as we can as just planting trees everywhere is unfortunately not the answer.

"Stithians was just one of our sites, and that was quite a small site in comparison to what we have now.

"We'd like to establish an Atlantic Oak wood, which is like a temperate rainforest, which is a habitat you find very specifically on the west coast of Britain.

"So we planted tree species that we hope will turn in to that habitat in 100 years time.

"Although there is CO2 offsetting with every tree that we plant, our main aim is to increase biodiversity and maintain habitat.

"So, our trees aren't planted really close together, for example we plant at quite a low stocking density for the areas in which we do plant, and each area is assessed to find out what kind of habitat would be best established there.

For more information on Plant One Cornwall, visit: www.plantonecornwall.com