The Lost Rainforests of Britain

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Many of England’s rainforests were lost long ago, to the axes of Bronze Age farmers and medieval tin miners. Others were lost more recently to well-meaning but profoundly misguided forestry policies, which led to the felling of ancient, shrunken oaks in favour of fast-growing Sitka spruce. And in many places where rainforests would naturally flourish, overgrazing by sheep – whose sharp teeth hungrily eat up every sapling – has prevented their return. The Lost Rainforests of Britain campaign today launches a new map revealing the extent of Britain’s surviving fragments of temperate rainforest.

The project sees Aviva partner with The Wildlife Trusts, a federation of 46 local Wildlife Trusts that care for more than 2,300 nature reserves in the UK with local communities at their heart. It aims to re-establish temperate rainforest by planting a combination of native tree species including oak, birch, holly, rowan, alder and willow trees across an area equivalent to around 2,600 football pitches or around 5,200 acres. The carbon removal should deliver significant biodiversity and climate change adaptation benefits by creating habitat that can support flora including mosses, lichen, ferns and a host of unusual plants and wildlife such as wood warblers, bats, pine martens and red squirrels. The increase in woodland should also help to moderate water flows and improve shading in the hotter, drier conditions expected with climate change. One such area is Ausewell Woods, a small woodland on the eastern edge of Dartmoor National Park. A narrow country lane, lined by low stone walls covered in green moss, led to the entrance, where I stepped out of my car and into the squelchy mud of the woodland car park. Through the early morning mist, I caught glimpses of greenery in the trees, before – rather too appropriately – it began raining. Dr Smith says that the biodiversity of the United Kingdom's temperate rainforests "rivals the cloud forests of the Andes", and because many of the species found in the UK – including the rare lungwort lichen – are threatened or not found elsewhere, "we have an international responsibility to conserve them here".But as I read with horror about this destruction, I started to realise that more fragments of our temperate rainforest have survived to the present day than I first thought. It wasn’t just Wistman’s Wood: rainforests cling on, too, along the whole valley of the Dart river (as the poet Alice Oswald reminds us, dart is Brythonic Celtic for “oak”), the Bovey and Teign rivers, and far beyond. If you were asked where the world's most endangered rainforest is, then it's unlikely your first answer would be the British Isles. But the United Kingdom is home to dwindling patches of temperate rainforest, a rare and ancient ecosystem that is found in isolated fragments along the country's western coastlines.

The project is expected to remove approximately 800,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere - equivalent to the emissions created by one person taking over 740,000 transatlantic flights* Britain’s rainforest zone – where the climate is sufficiently rainy and mild for temperate rainforest to thrive; a region covering around 20% of Britain. This was constructed using an ‘index of hygrothermy’ to show gradations of climate, with lighter blues showing an ‘oceanic’ climate and darker blues and purples denoting a ‘hyper-oceanic’ climate. More details in our metholodogy document below.Lost” rainforest is a romantic idea but Britain’s Atlantic temperate rainforest is a formal, scientifically recognised habitat – and globally scarcer than tropical rainforest. According to ecologists, “rainforest” is land receiving more than 1,400mm of rain each year with rain spread across the summer as well as winter. Temperate rainforest is cool but not cold, with July temperatures averaging 16C or less. “It’s the definition of a British summer holiday really,” says Shrubsole wryly. So the next time you go for a walk in the woods and spot ferns growing from branches, lichen sprouting like coral and tree trunks bubbling with moss, you may well be walking through one of this country’s forgotten rainforests. Aviva is a Living Wage, Living Pension and Living Hours employer and provides market-leading benefits for our people, including flexible working, paid carers leave and equal parental leave. Find out more at https://www.aviva.com/about-us/our-people/ FOR most of my life, I didn’t realise that Britain has rainforests. But then, two years ago, I moved to Devon. Exploring woods in forgotten valleys and steep-sided gorges, I found places exuberant with life. At a recent event in parliament, environment minister Rebecca Pow said that much of the remaining temperate rainforests were already protected, citing figures from Natural England. But analysis by Lost Rainforests of Britain has found that only 5,000 hectares (12,489 acres) of English rainforest is under formal protection in SSSIs.

Epiphytes are not parasitic. Because it’s wet enough, they simply use trees and branches as structures on which to grow. Britain’s temperate rainforests are incredibly rich in ferns, including polypody ferns which grow along the branches of trees. There are also many species of rare lichen, moss, and lungwort, and these epiphytes, in turn, support a massive amount of biodiversity when they grow on ancient oak and other woodland trees. How extensive were temperate rainforests in Britain’s past?

The government has previously said that much of the country’s temperate rainforest is protected and that it is committed to its safekeeping.

Temperate rainforests would have been felled as long ago as the Bronze Age to clear space for farming. That’s understandable. What’s more tragic is what has happened in recent decades. We still had more of these rainforests up until recent times, but when the Forestry Commission was formed in the early 20th century, it decided to fell old ancient woodland and planted conifers instead. Beefsteak fungus growing in a temperate rainforest in Wales. What inspired you to advocate for Britain’s rainforests? For more details on what we do, our business and how we help our customers, visit www.aviva.com/about-us Britain’s rainforest fragments – where we believe to be Britain’s surviving fragments of temperate rainforest. This shows that rainforests today cover less than 1% of Britain.The carbon removal will begin from 2024 and will be at its fastest around 2060 when the forests are expected to be removing about 24,000 tonnes CO2 each year. The carbon removal will continue at a slower rate well beyond 2130. The whole woodland creation programme is expected to bring about a net reduction in atmospheric carbon levels from 2036 onwards. It is expected that by 2040, when Aviva plans to be a Net Zero company, the projects will already have removed more than 34,000 tonnes of emissions from the atmosphere. The GIS maps were built by Guy Shrubsole and Tim Richards of Terra Sulis Research CIC. The interactive online map was built by Blue Tomato Pop. I’ve had more contributions than I can possibly deal with. It’s clearly touched a nerve, and I’m glad because for me there’s always this double take: “A rainforest? In Britain? What?” I’ve been signed up by a publisher to write a book on Britain’s lost rainforests now, too. “Knowing where the rainforests are is a crucial part of knowing how to save them,” Shrubsole says. W hat more can be done to save the rainforests? Caroline Lucas is introducing a private member’s bill on the issue and Shrubsole hopes to persuade all political parties to commit to it in their manifestos. Would a future Labour government widen access to the countryside? “I’m cautiously optimistic that Labour sees access to nature as being part of its legacy and its future. Labour brought in the National Parks Act and the original right to roam in 2000. A number of senior Labour people now see that as unfinished business. I would love Labour to say a lot more about the nature crisis and find its voice on that again because it clearly needs to.”