Tree planting projects are welcome in somewhere as deforested as Northern Ireland

The National Trust intends to plant 20 million trees within the next decade in projects across the UK, including Northern Ireland

The conservation charity is doing this to help to tackle climate change and to bolster and provide shelter for wildlife.

It is timely, not least because of ecological change caused by temperature increases, the long-term scale of which cannot be predicted accurately but about which many scientists have become increasingly concerned since the 1980s.

But it is also timely because the lockdown seems to have sparked a renewed interest in the countryside.

People have flocked to outdoor spots such as Crawfordsburn Country Park in north Down, Cairn Wood in the Craigantlet Hills, the Stormont estate in Belfast and Hillsborough Forest Park near Lisburn.

In recent months so many people have been enjoying Divis and Black Mountains in west Belfast, which are National Trust properties, that visitors had to be urged to stick to the paths.

The great bulk of people attending such locations have just wanted to exercise in attractive countryside, and have observed social distancing.

One of the mistakes made in the early parts of lockdown a year ago was the closure of parks, which was particularly unfair on disadvantaged people living in properties with limited or no outside space.

It is good that these locations have stayed open in this more recent lockdown. That they have proved so popular even in winter is a reflection of the yearning that many people have felt for outdoors at this difficult time.

Northern Ireland is one of the most deforested parts of Europe, so any tree planting project is particularly welcome here.

It is also much less densely populated than England so perhaps our local politicians, who are rarely shy about spending money, should consider locations where they can buy up some more land that could be enjoyed by the general public.

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