FIFTY trees have been stolen from a York field - just a week after they were planted.

The bizarre theft from the Millennium Field, near York's Millennium Bridge, has saddened and baffled St Nick's, or the Friends of St Nicholas Fields, which planted the trees.

Habitats officer Nicola Ward said she had no idea who would want to steal them, as the most that usually happened with newly planted trees was 'casual and opportunistic vandalism.'

She said: "We expect to lose a couple that won't take but we've never had anything on this kind of scale happen before.

"We weren't sure if people were thinking they were all one species or knew they were mixed. We genuinely cannot make heads or tails of it."

She said that as some people had posted on Facebook, the Woodland Trust, which had donated the trees, gave people free trees, 'so they aren't exactly hard to get hold of.'

She said: "Whoever took them carefully replaced the supports and tree guards to try and disguise their thievery after the trees were taken, so it didn't look like anything had happened.

"It was only noticed that the trees were gone when the group were checking on them and they saw the guards were empty. It was a thought-out theft."

She said the stolen trees were a mixture of hawthorns, hazels, silver birch, rowans, oaks and blackthorn.

"The newly planted trees were taken from the patch between the copse at Millennium Fields and the river, so the people who took them would have been out of sight, hidden by the cover of the mature trees in the copse when they were digging them out," she said.

"The trees were planted as a way to improve the scrub layer around the woodland, so there was additional habitat for species like low nesting birds - bullfinches, wrens, dunnocks etc - small mammals, pollinators and other invertebrates.

"As the stolen trees have not turned up, we have bought more trees to replace them to ensure the habitat is still improved for wildlife."

She said the theft had not been reported to the police unfortunately, as she hadn't believed there would be any way of tracking them down.

However, she urged anyone seeing anything suspicious in the area to ring 101 and report it to the police.

The Friends of Rowntree Park, which is situated just across the River Ouse from the field, posted on Facebook that they were 'absolutely shocked and saddened too' by the theft, adding:"Hopefully, someone has seen or heard something."

Another person posted: "This is unbelievable. Do people not know that the Woodland Trust provides free trees, couriered to your location!" while a third asked: "Who on earth steals TREES???"