The Woodland Heritage Champions Project is an England wide initiative that promotes ancient semi-natural woodlands and encourages local communities, woodland groups and volunteers to care for their natural heritage. It is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Forestry Commission, the Woodland Trust and SYBRG (South Yorkshire Biodiversity Research Group).

The project has produced a Manual that allows people to find out about the history of their woodland. It covers topics such as using documentary evidence for research, archaeological and ecological survey techniques,  interpreting and recording findings and considerations for management.

The manual was developed with the help of volunteers across England. Volunteers attended two workshops near their local woodland. The workshops reflected the contents of the manual covering themes including veteran and working trees, boundary features in woodlands, indicator species and carrying out field and archival surveys. As a follow up exercise to the workshops we are asked volunteers to test out survey guides and forms now published in the manual to create the most user friendly versions.

We have worked with woodland groups across England (Sherwood, South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Cumbria, the Chilterns, Devon, Suffolk, Epping and Surrey) and each of the groups have contributed to the manual by testing it and/ or by writing a case study.