By Nicola Tree
Recent research carried out by the University of Kent, supported by the Woodland Trust, confirms that our mood and general wellbeing is boosted by the wildlife in the UK’s woodland. Whilst it is now widely accepted that spending time in natural environments can improve our health and wellbeing, this research focused on the role of biodiversity in delivering these benefits.
BIO-WELL, a biodiversity and human wellbeing scale was used to quantify the effect that biodiversity has on people’s wellbeing. Respondents were asked to consider their wellbeing in relation to specific metrics and attributes of biodiversity, including the variety of species, behaviours, colours, shapes, textures, sounds and smells, with the following findings:
- Woodland sounds, eg. Bird song, crunchy autumn leaves or trees rustling in the wind, resulted in the most wellbeing responses (40.4%);
- Natural processes and behaviours (26.5%), eg. First spring flowers, gave the second most wellbeing responses, followed by colours (23.7%), textures (7.3%) and smells (2.1%);
- Silver birch was highest on a list of favourite trees, above horse chestnut and oak;
- The blue tit had the highest reported wellbeing benefits of woodland birds, followed by blackbird and chaffinch.
Although 90% of the more than 10,000 people questioned agreed that woodland biodiversity has a positive impact on their wellbeing, the study highlighted huge regional differences. The majority of wellbeing hotspots were found to be in South East England and parts of Scotland, areas known to have a higher proportion of woodland, especially ancient and long-established woodland cover.
This latest research backs up previous studies, including research carried out at King’s College London in 2024. This citizen science study found that environments with a larger number of natural features, such as trees, birds, plants and waterways, were associated with greater mental wellbeing than environments with fewer features. Researchers at King’s College suggested that moving away from heavily manicured landscapes, typically associated with low biodiversity, towards spaces which mirror the biodiversity of natural ecosystems could maximise the benefits of nature for mental wellbeing.
