Is there a rainforest near you?
Join the quest to find, preserve and expand the remains of Britain’s ancient temperate rainforests…
It might be closer than you think.
IT’S TRUE: BRITAIN has rainforests. Not in the tropical sense; not thousands of miles of dense, humid foliage populated by macaws and anteaters. What we’ve got is temperate rainforest: ancient woodland that thrives on the cocktail of rainfall and warm air brought to our western shores by the Gulf Stream.
Today it only exists in pockets and fragments; most of it has been lost to 4000 years of felling and grazing stretching back to the Bronze Age. But prior to that, most of western Britain would have been swathed in rich, damp, sparkling rainforest.
And writer and activist Guy Shrubsole hopes we can bring some of it back. Already well-known as the author of the astonishing book Who Owns England? (which reveals the true scale of private land ownership across the country), Guy became entranced by the fragments of temperate rainforest he found after moving to Devon last year. Discovering that similar remnants could be found all the way up the Atlantic side of the country, he set up the blog Lost Rainforests of Britain. In it, he asked the nation to seek them out, photograph them, and help to build the first comprehensive map of our temperate rainforest. The response has been staggering; his map now includes hundreds of sites from Marazion in Cornwall to the Ariundle oakwoods of northwest Scotland.
“I thought maybe I’d hear from a few enthusiasts, but I was overwhelmed,” says Guy.
“I’m still going through photos now!”
So what does a lost rainforest look like? Generally it occurs in pockets of high, exposed, ancient, damp woodland, mostly in western coastal
areas and uplands. The giveaway is the presence of epiphytes, or as Guy puts it, “plants growing on top of other plants”: ferns, mosses and lichens which have no root on the ground, but instead colonise the boughs and branches of trees, because the trees are so rich in moisture that they can sustain the plants through their entire life cycle.
The best-known example is Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, an ancient oakwood perched on the western slopes of Longaford Tor near Princetown. But there are many, many others.
“One of the best examples I’ve seen is Lustleigh Cleave, on the eastern edge of Dartmoor, because it’s a temperate rainforest that is actually regenerating,” says Guy.
“If you look at photos of it in the Seventies it looks more like savanna: open and almost treeless, because it had been continually grazed for a few thousand years. What’s changed is that the common graziers decided not to exercise their right, because for many it wasn’t economical any more. Instead they access subsidies for looking after it as a SSSI. And I thought that was really interesting. If it could happen on a common on Dartmoor, it could happen anywhere, couldn’t it?”
So Guy’s quest isn’t just to build a picture of our rainforest fragments, but to protect and grow them.
“Yes, it’s wonderful to visit these places, and people are clearly loving going for walks to find areas that they think might be temperate rainforest,” says Guy.
“And it’s a wonderful way of connecting to ancientness. But the broader point is to see if we can allow a few more of them to regenerate and spread once again, just like Lustleigh Cleave.”
The dream of course requires co-operation: farmers, landowners, local authorities, conservation bodies and national parks would all have to be on board, and funding to encourage the restriction of grazing will be key.
But promisingly, Guy is already hearing from landowners who suspect they have rainforest fragments on their land and are interested in helping them to expand.
“I think it would send a signal to the rest of the world if we did this,” Guy adds.
“It says, ‘look, here’s a wealthy nation that has depleted its nature and destroyed a lot of the habitats that it once had; our bad – but now we’re going to start to restore them’.”
For now, Guy is looking forward to some epic road trips to some of the most promising areas he’s been shown by his army of contributors.
He’s also starting work on a book about the project, due to be published next year.
“I’ve still got a lot of photos to go through and people to get back to,” he says.
“But I can’t wait to take it to the next stage.”
At lostrainforestsofbritain.org you can: Find full details of the project
Learn how to spot a rainforest fragment Submit photos and reports of possible sites View the map so far
Plan visits to scores of sites across the country