To ask the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development whether her Department would consider the development of a woodland inventory.

Yes, my Department’s Forest Service is already compiling a woodland inventory from existing data sources. These include data held by DARD, DoE’s Environment Agency and Land and Property Services.

We started this work last year and found a modest increase in woodland area, however, there are issues to be resolved about the quality of some of the mapping data. Further analysis is being carried out this year, taking account of new data, based on a combination of satellite imagery and digital cartography, to validate the woodland data set.

At the end of this business year, Forest Service will publish improved baseline information of woodland area in the north of Ireland.