The Strange Reappearance of Britain’s ‘Lost Rainforests’ (or The Power of Marketing)

Guy Shrubsole is an English author and land rights campaigner who first came to prominence with his 2019 book, Who Owns England?, to which question a partial answer is that half of it is owned by less than one per cent of the population.

His new book, The Lost Rainforests of Britain, quickly became a bestseller and the winner of the 2023 Wainwright Prize for writing on conservation. He had previously moved from London to live in Devon, in the south-west of England. There he became fascinated by the fragments of ancient sessile oak (Quercus petraea) woodland that clung on in steep valleys running down from the upland massifs of Dartmoor and Exmoor. The trees here are often dwarfed and contorted from the strong winds coming off of the sea. To add to their distinct appearance, the high rainfall in these areas and the constant dampness in these valleys provide for a rich epiphytic community of lichens, bryophytes and ferns which give the woodlands a distinct character.

Woodland ecologists had known of these habitats for some time (Hall et al. 2004; Rodwell 2005; Rothero 2005; Davies 2011) but tended to refer to them with names such as Quercus petraea - Betula pubescens - Dicranum majus woodlands, or Oceanic Zone or Atlantic woods. Guy’s smart move was in recognizing and naming them as what they were historically: the remnants of the oak-dominated temperate rainforest that would once have covered around 20 per cent of the British land, along the Atlantic seaboard of the country. This part of Britain extends from the tip of Cornwall in the south-west of England, through Wales and the Lake District to the far north of Scotland. This westerly area is characterized not only by its high rainfall but also by its hard Paleozoic rocks, which give rise to thin base-poor soils and to uplands dropping steeply to the sea.

Guy set up a website (lostrainforestsofbritain.org) to draw attention to these remaining rainforest fragments, and to campaign for their conservation and restoration. He couldn’t have known what would happen as a result. In the early months of 2023 a large insurance company donated £38 million ($49 million) to a network of wildlife conservation charities, specifically to fund British rainforest restoration. (For an example of how that funding is being used, in my home county, see here.) Later that year, the UK Government announced that “we will invest up to £750,000 in research and development in improving the resilience, management, and protection of temperate rainforests.” In addition, the Scottish Government invested almost £5 million in rainforest restoration in 2023-2024 and allocated a further £5 million as part of the draft 2025-26 budget. Nothing about the woodlands themselves had changed: the only difference was that they had been named as temperate rainforest and their existence brought to the public’s attention, yet this was enough to attract almost £49 million ($63 million)-worth of investment in them.

That might seem like a great deal of money to be lavished on a relatively tiny proportion of Britain’s woodlands, and I’m sure many conservation bodies would agree, but a comprehensive restoration program will be very expensive.

Because these are marginal livestock rearing areas they tend to be grazed largely by sheep, and where they are allowed access to unfenced woodland fragments their nibbling effectively prevents any natural regeneration of the oaks or other trees. Farmers will need to be persuaded, and paid, to fence off the surviving fragments, and compensated for the lost grazing and shelter.

A further threat, and a very big one, is the spread within them of the non-native and invasive Rhododendron ponticum (Casati et al. 2022). This shade-tolerant and evergreen shade-casting species, which is well adapted to the soils and climate of the British Atlantic seaboard, spreads both by seed and by vegetative layering to form dense clonal clumps that shade out the herb layer and tree seedlings. It is also an alternative host for various Phytophthora species, including P. ramorum. The plant was probably introduced from Spain as an ornamental, but soon found favor with gamekeepers as cover for young pheasants, particularly in the extensive sporting estates of Scotland. Control is time consuming, expensive, and not wholly effective as the plant is resistant to herbicides and the stumps re-sprout vigorously after cutting.

Given the need to fence out sheep, to compensate farmers, and to tackle the Rhododendron menace, the $63 million investment in the restoration and conservation of these woodlands doesn’t appear overly disproportionate to the challenge.

Works cited

Casati, M., T. Kichey, and G. Decocq. 2022. Monographs on Invasive Plants in Europe N°7: Rhododendron ponticum L. Botany Letters: 169(2), 213–236 [link]

Davies, A.L. 2011. Long-term approaches to native woodland restoration: Palaeoecological and stakeholder perspectives on Atlantic forests of Northern Europe.  Forest Ecology and Management 261(3): 751-763.  ISSN 0378-1127 [link]  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2010.12.006.

Hall, J.E., K.J. Kirby, and A.M. Whitbread. (2004). National Vegetation Classification: Field guide to woodland. JNCC.

Rodwell, J. 2005. Woodlands at the edge: A European perspective on the Atlantic Oakwood Plant Communities. Botanical Journal of Scotland 57(1–2): 121–133 [link]

Rothero, G. P. 2005. Oceanic bryophytes in Atlantic oakwoods. Botanical Journal of Scotland 57(1–2): 135–140 [link]