Royal Botanic Garden’s Chile branch off ice!
SOME of the world’s oldest trees could be rescued by a Scottish plan to buy a swathe of Chilean rainforest.
The Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh (RBGE) is working with the Rainforest Concern charity to raise up to £2.6 million for the bid.
The remote 5,000-acre forest – around the size of Stirling – is on the slopes of the Andes in southern Chile and contains conifers believed to be more than 5,000 years old.
It is home to pumas, the world’s tiniest deer, the pudu, and a marsupial known as the monito del monte or ‘little monkey of the mountains’.
Buying the forest would block a wind farm development plan and save the trees and wildlife from extinction.
The property would be purchased by Rainforest Concern with money being raised through an appeal to philanthropists, and managed in partnership with RBGE.
Part of the plan involves a research station for Edinburgh botanists to study the
Fitzroya cupressoides tree that could hold vital information about climate change because of its age.
Scientists would also use samples to help establish a genetically diverse back-up population in Scotland.
Martin Gardner, of the RBGE’s International Conifer Conservation Programme, said: ‘Time is not on our side. One of our competitors wants to establish a wind farm, which would be catastrophic for that forest.
‘We need forests like these for our survival. Through them we can look at the past – when there were droughts and fires.’
Oliver Whaley, chairman of Rainforest Concern, said the association with a world renowned research body such as RGBE was crucial.
He said: ‘This forest is probably the oldest in the Andes, which makes it very special.
‘Some of the trees have shown an amazing capacity to survive climate change.
‘If we are to address climate change, part of the solution is to save these forests.’