The Netherlands Will Increase Its Forests By a Quarter

The Netherlands currently shares with Ireland the title of Europe’s least wooded country—trees currently cover just 11 percent of its surface area. But following an announcement Monday, Mainland Europe’s most densely populated country should start getting a lot leafier. Holland’s State Forestry Commission, the Staatsbosbeheer, just unveiled a plan to boost the country’s forested area by as much as 25 percent. Over the next thirty years, the country will get 100,000 hectares (386 square miles) of new woodland as part of a scheme to both reduce carbon emissions and boost domestic timber production.

By North American standards, these numbers are relatively modest—the new forests would be roughly a third of the size of Rhode Island. But the notoriously tree-deprived Dutch are trying to re-grow the forest canopy of one of the most heavily developed, heavily exploited patches on Earth. The Netherlands has 394 inhabitants per square kilometer, widely dispersed over a sprawling net of small and medium-sized cities that are themselves surrounded by land heavily exploited for agriculture. So where are they going to put all those trees?