Temperate rainforest, which has been decimated over thousands of years, has the potential to be restored across a fifth of Great Britain, a new map reveals.
Atlantic temperate rainforest once covered most of the west coasts of Britain and Ireland, thriving in the archipelago’s wet, mild conditions, which support rainforest indicator species such as lichens, mosses and liverworts. Today, it covers less than 1% of land, having been cleared over thousands of years by humans and is only found in isolated pockets, such as the waterfalls region in the Brecon Beacons and Ausewell Wood on Dartmoor.
Human activity has impacted the amount of temperate rainforest in the UK but it still exists in a few places, such as the Brecon Beacons in Wales. Photograph: Henk Meijer/Alamy
Door: Patrick Greenfield, 21-10-2022
Afbeelding: Henk Meijer/Alamy