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  • Writer's pictureSteeple Woods

Educated guess

So, what links Bletchley Park code breakers, ecologists and a lot of missing trees?


That's not the start of one of the terrible volunteer team jokes (which is another story altogether) but the basis of a recent report.


The ecologists that produced the report used statistical techniques developed by wartime code breakers Alan Turing and others at Bletchley Park to estimate the likely number of tree species that are, as yet, undiscovered.


Thousands of ecologists surveyed trees across all around the world and the resulting database was used to estimate the total number of 73,300 species of tree on Earth, 9,000 of which have yet to be discovered.


This diagram summarises the results. GFBI shows the survey results and TREECHANGE the estimated missing species.

While we might not have any undiscovered species on the reserve, we certainly have quite a few that are on the GFBI database.


Why not come along and see for yourself?

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