UK Nature and Environment

Conservationists have praised the launch of a new government strategy to revive the remaining fragments of the vast temperate rainforests that once formed the “jewels of Britain’s nature crown”.

Temperate rainforest, also known as Atlantic woodland or Celtic rainforest, once covered most of western Britain and Ireland. The archipelago’s wet, mild conditions are ideal for lichens, mosses and liverworts. But centuries of destruction have meant that only small, isolated pockets remain.

In England, just 189 sq km (46,624 acres) survive from the ecosystem that once stretched from Cornwall to the west of Scotland, and these remain threatened by overgrazing from sheep, invasive species and nitrogen pollution.

After three years of campaigning, the government published a strategy at the end of November to protect and recover England’s temperate rainforests, and committed £750,000 for research and development.