UWTSD students support sustainable Kilvey Hill Christmas Tree event

Students and staff from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David (UWTSD) joined The Kilvey Hill Community Volunteers at a Christmas tree event – that also helps efforts to rewild the area.

Each year, Kilvey Community Woodland Volunteers, invite families up onto the hillside, where they can chop down one of the hundreds of pine trees which cover it, and take it home free of charge.

The initiative receives no funding and is run completely by local peoples' support through the local community group. The trees being removed are pole pine, they are a non-native species planted in the 1950-1970s by local school children over a barren wasteland, the remnants of slag from the copperworks.

The trees were planted in order to stabilise the ground, but they now need to be removed to make way for indigenous species. The Christmas tree event is a way of removing the trees and then allowing the area to self-seed. 

UWTSD’s Gareth Thomas, Civic Engagement Officer at the University’s Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation, Research & Enterprise (INSPIRE) said: “The event provides free Christmas trees to one of Wales most deprived areas, and at the same time, it gets local people onto the hill – a site of special scientific interest and the largest urban woodland in the UK.

“This year UWTSD environmental volunteers have been working on the hill, at weekly sessions, in order to prepare the hill for the event. This entailed clearing pathways and making the area safe, as well as, removing some of the scrubbier smaller trees.”

UWTSD volunteers then helped on the day with marshalling and improvised workshops. Over 250 local people turned up and took away over 500 trees.

Gareth added: “That's 500 local trees that would have been removed by felling in the near future and weren't grown on commercial farms that use glyphosate as herbicide.  They cleared approximately an acre of ground which will be allowed to self-seed with birch, alder, and hazel.  This work could not be carried out without the work of volunteers.”

Further Information

Rebecca Davies

Swyddog Gweithredol Cysylltiadau â’r Wasg a’r Cyfryngau

Executive Press and Media Relations Officer

Cyfathrebu Corfforaethol a Chysylltiadau Cyhoeddus

Corporate Communications and PR

Mobile: 07384 467071

Email: Rebecca.Davies@uwtsd.ac.uk