SAVERNAKE Forest will largely escape the chop as Forest Enterprise declares war on non-native species in ancient woodlands.

Over the last three years ancient woodlands controlled by Forest Enterprise, part of the Forestry Commission, have been surveyed to establish how many trees are foreign visitors.

Any plantations of non-native trees, like many of the fast-growing conifers planted during the Second World War for the lumber trade, face the chop.

Many of them are due to be harvested for their timber in due course anyway, but the new policy could hasten the end for some stands of non-traditional species in areas regarded as ancient woodland.

Ancient woodlands are defined as tracts of land that have been forested since at least 1600. Savernake Forest, once a royal hunting forest, is much older.

Some of its trees are over 1,000 years old. One, the Big Belly Oak, which stands beside the Marlborough-Burbage road, is believed to be over 1,100 years old.

In the Queen's Golden Jubilee year the Big Belly was named as one of the 50 most important trees in the UK.

Big Belly and most of the other trees in the Savernake woodland controlled by Forest Enterprise are safe from the woodmen's chainsaws and axes.

The only trees that will disappear as a result of the survey are imported species brought into the country because they are fast growing.

Ben Lennon, the district forester for planning at Forest Enterprise, Savernake, said that the government required the company to survey ancient woodlands to see if they could be returned to their 'apparent naturalness'.

Forest Enterprise organised a survey of all its woodland, including Savernake Forest and the outlying areas including West Woods, Bedwyn Common and Chisbury Wood.

Mr Lennon said: "Now all the different forest districts have started to work through all the data obtained in the survey."

Some areas of woodland in the UK where ancient forest has been replaced by non-native species will be undergoing a change of appearance in years to come.

Work has already started in some key areas in which large tracts of foreign species were planted.

These include Cranborne Chase where Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Spruce, fir, pine and western red cedar all of them fast-growing trees for the renewable source timber trade will disappear from 5,000 acres of the Cranborne Chase and other woods throughout Britain.

However, said Mr Lennon, Savernake will undergo little change because it largely comprises ancient species that have been present throughout its history and because it also has the protection of being a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

There will be little change in West Woods where mostly beech trees are found and where any major forest works would damage the carpet of bluebells that annually attracts hundreds of visitors.

Bedwyn Common and Chisbury Wood have not been included the Forest Enterprise survey because they are not regarded as ancient woodland.

Most of Savernake Forest is owned by the Ailesbury Estate that is administered by the Earl of Cardigan but has been leased to the Forestry Commission since the end of the Second World War.

Earlier this year Forest Enterprise started an experiment to return an area of the forest by the north end of the Grand Avenue to forest grazing.

The area has been fenced off and a small herd of cows introduced to see if the animals will keep down the undergrowth.

Forest Enterprise believes this will return the forest to the more open appearance it is believed to have once had.