Slimmed-Down Sherwood Forest as Elusive as Robin Hood These Days : Britain: A single stand of ancient woodland covers less than a square mile, all that remains of what once covered more than 100 square miles. Government hopes to restore it with help of private landowners.

Sherwood Forest, once the fabled haunt of socially conscious thieves and a villainous sheriff, is hardly big enough to hide Friar Tuck these days.

Timbering, farming, coal mining and urban sprawl have cut the once majestic broad-leaf forest down to a single stand of ancient woodland, barely enough for a decent chase scene. In fact, a walk through the wood takes a mere 20 minutes with nary a glimpse of deer.

“People come here expecting more. The forest has all but disappeared,” said Austin Brady, director of the Sherwood Initiative, a government-financed program set up to replant and protect the forest.

Brady hopes to restore the forest, but his success will depend on persuading private landowners to plant trees.

A single stand of ancient woodland covering less than three-quarters of a square mile is all that remains of the patchwork of forest and heath that once stretched 20 miles from Nottingham to Worksop in a swath five to eight miles across.

At its heart is a visitors’ center with trails that lead to sprawling 1,000-year-old Major Oak, where Robin Hood and his Merry Men were reputed to have hidden from the Sheriff of Nottingham.

“I can just imagine Kevin Costner or Errol Flynn jumping out of that tree,” said Ian Cameron, 39, of Dearborn, Mich., one of the million visitors a year.

Cameron said he was surprised by the size of one of the world’s most famous forests. “I thought it would be big, real big. But it’s still nice.”

The Sherwood Initiative plans to spend nearly $40 million to replant oaks, silver birches and yews of Sherwood Forest. Funds will come from the government’s Forestry Commission and private donations, Brady said.

Brady, 33, hopes that by the end of his life, new forest will have grown to nearly four square miles and more than 2.5 million trees will have been planted.

“The new trees will first be carefully planted in strategic locations around roads and footpaths to create avenues of forest,” he said. “These avenues will in turn connect larger areas of forest.”

The Sherwood Initiative already is growing seedlings for planting.

“To ensure the new forest is still Sherwood, we are cloning oaks and birch cuttings from trees in the existing forest,” Brady said. Those seedlings should be resistant to local diseases and shouldn’t infect old stands with new diseases.

The ugly slag heaps and scarred earth of six closed coal mines will eventually be returned to woodland, Brady said.

The project has the backing of the county council of Nottinghamshire, 150 miles northwest of London. Tourism is now tied with textiles as the No. 1 contributor to the local economy--each worth 25,000 jobs and $370 million in annual revenue.

“Robin Hood and Sherwood Forest are pivotal in our tourism campaign,” said James Berresford, the county’s assistant director for tourism. “The forest is a part of our heritage and we want to protect it.”

Whether the reforestation program succeeds depends largely on whether the biggest owners of open land--farmers--agree to plant trees instead of crops.

“It’s right that we should start doing it, but we can’t afford to do a lot of it,” said farmer Robert Bealby.

Bealby grows wheat, barley, potatoes, sugar beets and oil seed on his 2,000-acre farm west of the old-growth forest.

The subsidy for planting trees “is getting close to tempting now. I think they must be very close to what we’d earn from an average crop of barley,” he said.

But he said farmers would hesitate because of uncertainty over the long-term prospects of selling timber from their stands.

Bealby has planted about an acre of timber, and he expects to double that soon. Eventually, he would like to have a 50-acre stand of trees.

The Forestry Commission pays farmers the equivalent of $825 to plant an acre with broad-leaf trees, plus $160 an acre annually for 15 years. In some circumstances, farmers are eligible for an extra one-time payment of $380 an acre.

Money is not the only persuader. Brady said local residents also see replanting as an opportunity to improve the quality of their environment, water and wildlife.

Joan Meaking, 57, mourns the loss of the great swathes of trees she remembers from her childhood. As a college prank in 1957, she and 19 friends packed into the hollow trunk of Major Oak.

“We’re losing our history,” she said.

Sherwood was a crown forest from the time of Henry I. King John held an emergency Parliament at nearby Clipstone in 1200, and Edward I also summoned Parliament there.

“It’s very sad when you think of how long it takes to grow an oak,” she added. “I won’t live to see seedlings grow to become magnificent trees.”

Information about the Sherwood Forest Initiative is on the Internet at https://www.sherwoodinitiative.co.uk. Or write Austin Brady at Forestry Commission, Cuckney Road, Carburton, Worksop, Notts., S80 3BP.