A Bold Solution Restoring Britain s Rainforests

Britain has a forgotten past, but if you know where to look, you'll remember. When you're able to see into a lost world, you realise that although enchanting and mysterious, it's actually a very familiar place, holding an abundance of life and providing calm and comfort like few other habitats. Britain is a forgotten rainforest nation, but this is changing. In this video, we're going to the home of the Thousand Year Trust, the only UK charity dedicated to the protection and restoration of temperate rainforests, and they've had a very exciting and important progression in their story. They've put on a lot of growth. It's really great to be back here. So I'm here at Kabila, I'm actually here at the location of the Thousand Year Trust. This is a really special location for a number of reasons. As you can see around me, these are the early stages of a temperate rainforest regenerating, coming back up. Oh wow, this gate wasn't open last time. Looks like they've, yeah, even more trees growing off out this way. Look at that, off out here and down there and over there. And don't be fooled by the blue sunshine and the bright skies. This is a habitat which is an area which receives an awful lot of rain. Of course it does, because it is rainforest after all. It is getting the attention it deserves now, but it often comes to a surprise to most people that Britain has rainforest. But when you think about the amount of rain that we get in this country, you know, it really is no surprise. We are, we are a rainforest people, but this is something that we've forgotten. But you're certainly reminded of it when you come here. I'm up on Kabila Tor, this is a great vantage point. You can see the rainforest the other side, you can hear the river down in the valley running. Oh, let's get down to that river and have a look. I can hear the river, very excited to get down there. I'm actually quite excited to get some water in this hair. I'm growing it, no mean comments about the hair please. I'm trying to get beyond the awkward stage right now. So these wet river valleys laden with trees are the ideal conditions for temperate rainforest to form, but it's really rare now. I mean, there's less than 0.4% of the UK, which is covered in this habitat. And historically it was as much as 25%, a quarter of the country covered in rainforest. I mean, who really knows for certain? It likely could have been much more of Britain and I like to think it was, but what is for sure is that these ancient tolgy oak forests were hacked back by humans. The abbreviated demise of Britain's rainforests is that it began slowly with Neolithic settlers making clearings for their unusual domesticated animals and over the millennia which follows, a steady rot took hold. Whether if it was to make way for an empire building war trade or to fuel the fires of industrial revolution, by the 20th century, Britain's rainforests were all but decrepit. Isolated patches, fragments being stressed further by unprecedented levels of grazing, ingress of invasive trees and urbanization. And it's not just Britain's rainforests which have suffered. Throughout time and all over the world, we've seen the degradation of habitat and the loss of species. But at Leaf Curious, while we do face and acknowledge these problems, we also share solutions. And this is why I want to tell you about the brilliant rewarding organisation, Planet Wild. These guys run a membership subscription, community funding, that unites regular people toward a common goal of making the planet wilder. If you've been following the channel over the past few months, you'll know I've been working with Planet Wild. They partner with some of the most innovative environmental organisations around the world and are working to create real and lasting impact. I'm a member myself and I've been so impressed with the work that they're doing. They are scaling their membership now to I think well over 11,000 members globally. This is something which anybody can be a part of, no matter where you're from and no matter what you can contribute. What I really find special about Planet Wild is that you can see the work. Every month they release a new video on their YouTube channel and it's such a diversity of different projects. Whether if it's restoring entire habitats or whether if it's working with new technologies to help species, what's always at the heart of their projects isn't just nature restoration but it's also people and I think that is so important when we're looking to actually make a meaningful impact to the planet. Their most recent mission is a perfect example of this, which saw the backing of Lion Lights, an ingenuitive solution created by Richard who answered the age-old conflict between Kenyan cattle farmers and lions. By funding the installation of these lights, farmers can continue their way of life peacefully and the lion's future is ensured. When we come together, when like-minded people come together to work towards a common goal, we're always going to do more. We're always going to achieve more and it's organisations like Planet Wild which are facilitating this. And look, if you're unsure about signing up then I do really recommend going and watching their channel, which is the best way to learn about them. But if you do want to sign up, I've got an offer for you. The first 150 people to sign up using the link in the description and in the comments or the code that's on the screen now, there's also a QR code, you can go and scan that as well. If you do this, you will get your first month of membership paid for for free. The first 150 people, let's try and reach that number, that would be awesome. You know, this means you can start helping nature now and it won't cost you anything. I'm getting a really wet bum, I don't necessarily mind because this is a beautiful habitat. Let's continue. So we've got a little minute till we catch up with Merlin but what I want to do here is in this little clearing where there's some light coming through, is I'm just gonna lay back and take it in. You know, I don't spend enough time in temperate rainforests. You know, for someone who loves nature so much and wants to share it with so many people, you know, I feel like sometimes, you know, when I'm preoccupied with making films and videos, you actually don't get to spend that much time in nature. So I'm going to make a better commitment now to just to just spend more time in nature in places like this. What a day! It was like this last time. I know, it was, wasn't it? Yeah, I was very, I was almost surprised. This is Isabel. She was wandering around the fields. She's an intern. Thousand Year Trust is the only charity in the UK dedicated to the protection and restoration of Atlantic temperate rainforests and we sit in the heart of one of the largest and best preserved rainforests in the southwest called the Kabila Valley which is about 75 acres of temperate rainforests. It's about 4,000 years old and it's a just a stunning sight to really get under the skin of what makes these habitats tick and our charity, our mission, is to try and triple the amount of rainforest growing across the UK over the next 30 years. We think there might be as much as about 300,000 acres across the whole of the western reaches of the UK from the northwest of Scotland all the way down through the highlands through Cumbria and the Lake District from Anglesey past Aberystwyth to Pembrokeshire and then down in the southwest places like Exmoor, Dartmoor, Bobbinmoor, the Lizard and West Penwith and what we'd like to do is start to see that return to a little bit of its former glory. The reason we really want to do this is because at our charity and many other charities beautiful partners of ours like the National Trusts, the Wildlife Trust and the Woodland Trust, we're all passionate about the fact that Atlantic temperate rainforests are one of our absolute pinnacle habitats in the UK for carbon sequestration, they suck in more CO2 than anything else we can grow, for biodiversity abundance. At a time that we are one of the or the most nature depleted country in Europe nothing restores all of the layering of life that we should see the rainforest but I always think from a personal level and also from our charity's perspective most importantly they're one of the best habitats in the UK for the mental health and well-being of the humans who spend time amongst them but we need to study this more deeply. So from very early on I was really struck by all of the different scientists all of the different universities that wanted to come and collaborate with us and I realised how little opportunity there was within the educational sector and the academic sector to access healthy examples of temperate rainforest to be able to study them to be able to do long-form multi-year multidisciplinary programs on this habitat which is so important and I began to realise the more I spoke to academics that if you're a young conservation scientist and you want to make your career in rainforests it's almost certain that you're going to do that in tropical rainforests and that makes sense because there's 99% more of them than there are temperate rainforests but there's also hundreds of universities with dedicated courses research institutes that provide millions of dollars of funding every year and field stations in tropical rainforest environments in the Amazon or Borneo or Colombia where you can go as a young scientist you can get into these habitats you can stay in them in a residential capacity you can join projects and expeditionary teams you can contribute to peer-reviewed papers and you can shift government policy and societal opinion of these habitats and that is why when all of us have been growing up and at school we learn a lot about tropical rainforests it's because they've been well studied and well researched if this if a young conservation scientist wants to make their career in Atlantic temperate rainforests there isn't a single university course a single research institute giving funding or a single research station across the entire European seaboard from Bergen in southwest Norway to Braga in northern Portugal and anywhere in between where you can stay and actually learn and study and be a part of understanding these habitats. So our next big project at the Thousand Year Trust is that we are building Europe's first Atlantic temperate rainforest research station here on Bobbin Moor which is pretty much the middle point of the Atlantic temperate rainforest range the bioclimatic envelope and this will be a home for scientists, academics, the local community, volunteer groups to be able to have a safe residential research site where they can step off into this habitat and actually do this work. If you want to support and follow the Thousand Year Trust I have left a link to their website in the description of this video but for now Merlin and I are going to walk talk and answer the questions from the Leave Curious members over on Patreon. So I asked the Leave Curious members what they wanted to really know about this habitat and about the project and Robbie Bennett asked how quickly can these habitats regenerate and where in the UK are these projects feasible? So that's a great, that's two questions and they're great questions. So to take the first one about how quickly they can regenerate we've called our charity the Thousand Year Trust with a real obvious purpose to that name and it's because the paramount species in Atlantic temperate rainforest in the UK tends to be the sessile oak, the Celtic oak, and that's a thousand year creature so it's got a thousand year lifespan of a full cycle. So the short answer is it can take up to a thousand years but we have areas here at Cabilla that were taken out of traditional farming 30 years ago that have become really healthy temperate rainforest now. So I'd say the window is anything between 30 years to a thousand years and part of the work of our charity is trying to use research to understand how we can accelerate the process, how we can make it close to 30 years. All the planting we're about to walk past here that we've done in the last two years, a hundred thousand trees that are being established at the Cabilla site all in a rainforest pattern and they're being planted with intention to try and make sure that we can slightly leapfrog some of the stages of that process and get to mature temperate rainforest sooner. He had a second question. Oh he did didn't he? Around where these projects are feasible. So it all comes down to hydrology and really for the kind of epiphyte growth, the lichens and the bryophytes and the epiphytes up in the canopy that you find in temperate rainforests, you need these hypo-oceanic climates which tend to have about 1400 millimetres of rain throughout the year and it can't all fall in one big monsoon season, it all has to fall in a staggered approach across the year. So you need 1400 millimetres a year and that needs to fall in a consistent way across the 12 months which really bounds you to the western quarter of the UK, although there are some areas which because of topography, because of the way the land lies, you can get rainforest in more eastern areas as well but mainly it's those western areas. Well kind of in tune with that question, in line with that question, Nick asked, I would be interested to know the challenges of translocating epiphytes and really is it even possible and how would you go about it? Should you go about it or should you let these things form? I mean I had a long call about exactly that subject this morning with our research directors who were on your last video Rob and you're in Harrison and we've got some funding from an amazing organisation who are supporting on exactly this kind of research. So on our research station roof, it's going to have a living roof that's going to be an epiphyte growing laboratory of its own using innovative technology like ropes and the way that you can grow seaweed on ropes and other structures that you can figure out how we do that because it's really difficult to grow epiphytes and then to translocate them onto younger trees and a lot of organisations have had a lot of trouble with this and not much success. We want to really get to the nub of that question. Is it possible? Is it a good idea and how can we do it in a sustainable and successful way? Yeah that's awesome. I mean it really is, I mean it's what you think about when you come to a rainforest so if there's a way of accelerating that process that I mean that would be awesome. Okay so Anton asked this is, he says I'm interested to understand the administrative structure that will protect the land for generations. He says I'm a Maori by heritage and have seen trusts come and go over time so how are we going to make sure that you know this land stays temperate rainforest? I mean that's a huge question, a huge issue and I also think a really exciting one which in the UK we're starting to really work through around what land ownership structures should look like, what right to roam and public access should look like, how we reduce the inequality of access to land especially with an increasing urban population so that's a huge question and one that I'm personally really passionate about increasing the access that people have to these habitats whilst also making sure the habitats are protected and restored at the same time. We've seen sites where because there's totally unfettered public access perhaps and people haven't really been informed upon how fragile these habitats are there has been some damage and I want to make sure that doesn't happen here. The short answer to the question I think is that it does involve trusts so I would like to see the Kabila rainforest and all of this land come into public ownership. I think that more land should be in public ownership and be owned by charities like the National Trust, the Woodland Trust and the Wildlife Trust, organisations that will protect it for longer periods than just one lifetime. I used to joke about how my father protected Kabila for the last 60 years, I'll protect it for my 60 years and my children will protect it for the next 60 years and my wife pulled me up on that and said if you try and put that burden upon them then it's guaranteed they won't be interested in it at all and I don't want them to feel that burden. I want them to feel free to be able to do whatever they want with their lives but I want to know that the project that we've started here will continue for hundreds of years and I think the best way to do that is within the charity structure in the UK. Okay so tomorrow I'm going to be going to go see Coombshead, we were in Coombshead with Derek and all the great work they're doing to sort of bring back animals. He's a great friend and a great man. Yeah and Jim, Jim Lord from the members area has asked, okay let's read this, my question is rather that it is combined with the Coombshead, oh my question is can this be combined with the project so that the long-lost fauna could thrive with the new fauna and he's very pleased with himself because he managed to use the words flora and fauna in the same sentence. So Derek and I always partner whenever we can, he sourced our beavers for us for our beaver project and we're working with him on the Wildcat and the Pine Marten reintroduction programs which are running across Exmoor, Dartmoor and Bobbinmoor to try and bring them back across that corridor of uplands in the southwest. I think that wherever we can create, you know the answer to everything is making nature bigger, better and more joined up, the Lawton report and using also the American conservation model of cores, corridors and carnivores, you know nothing can happen in isolation. All of these rainforests that we currently have in the UK are effectively island habitats and island habitats are always under risk both genetically and just spatially because they will shrink rather than grow. So wherever we can we need to join up and I would love to see a corridor connecting what Derek's doing across the border in England as we say down here in Cornwall with what we're doing down here and all of the other amazing projects which are also doing really inspirational work in between and to either side of us. So yeah I'm a big big fan of that and thank you Jim for asking that question. Yeah that's a great question. On my trip here I'm going to be going over to take a look at Dartmoor as a potential area for sort of I mean I guess I guess if you because like a big part of what you're doing is you're using this space as a model right to show surrounding landowners how we can move away from some pretty destructive land management practices towards something which you know works with the environment, works with you know still farming sheep and all the rest of it. How much success have you found with this and you know like how's that journey been? So Cabilla is designed as a blueprint site. We are a medium-sized upland hill farm. We're about 240-250 acres of which quite a lot is actually woodland so it's not farmed. It's about 160 acres of farmland. The average size of farm in the UK is about 220 acres so we sit nicely within that category of an average sized farm. The UK has to use its land for a number of different things. There are five key areas. We need to produce food for everybody in the UK. We need to grow timber as a timber crop. We need to restore nature and fight climate change. We need to provide spaces for people to to live and enjoy and I know I'm four and there's definitely five but we need to have land. We need to have a land use strategy that covers all types of things that we that we do in the UK and what I want to provide here is a blueprint for upland farmers to say traditionally we farmed sheep and a little bit of cattle on these landscapes. The average upland farm upland hill farm on Bobbinmore and Dartmoor takes between 85 and 93 percent of their annual income from European subsidies at the moment. These subsidies are going. This is changing. When is that changing? So it's a slow sort of a slow removal of these subsidies and 2028 is the final year that they'll be paid the basic payment scheme and so farmers are all having to look quite hard at how they manage their land and try and figure out a new financial model. Our argument here is that you can have a more resilient financial model on a an upland hill farm by farming rainforest and restoring rainforest because you have carbon opportunities, biodiversity net gain opportunities, ecotourism, conservation grazing with direct consumer meat. That is a better model than chucking on sheep and claiming a subsidy for it and usually burning the wool and exporting the lamb which is what tends to happen with a lot of what happens on this land and so if we can prove that model, which we can prove, then hopefully that will start a movement where other farmers, our neighbours and other farmers around us will do the same thing and will realise that this is a better thing to do with their land than what has been done since the second world war. Yeah I mean it's one thing to to just say do these things but if you can just do it and sort of lead by example in a way and just have the proof you know. It's got to be financially resilient, it's got to make sense because farmers on the uplands especially, they're not making huge amounts of money from their land, they want to keep their families in their homes, they want to have security for the next generation for the future. I believe that in rainforest landscapes like Bobbin Moor, Dartmoor, Exmoor you can have a better farming model by restoring rainforest than you can under more traditional farming practices that are based just on grazing. Awesome yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've done well to keep the flow going whilst you're here. I do this a few times a day. So one of the first things Merlin did here was reintroduce beavers down in the valley bottom one of these keystone species that can pack a really good punch in terms of ecosystem function and we've got farmers and neighbouring landowners on both sides of our river. Half the side said you know love what you're doing, really into the restoration work and you know we really like beavers so how can we explore that as well. The other side said if we see a beaver on our land we will shoot it and I think that kind of encapsulates the two sort of arguments you get a lot of these things there's always extreme versions at both ends but I think you know a lot of people also do sit in the middle but it's got to come from bottom up and top down as well you know the government is still kind of behind in terms of their policy landscape in terms of incorporating nature into farming. For so long you know forestry and agriculture have been two separate disciplines you know you put a wall between the fields and this is very much woodland and that's very much agriculture but I think now it's very much an emerging field and we're starting to see the benefits of agroforestry in that you know these two things can work together and you can have trees and also cattle in a landscape which is what the system will be in five to ten years time when the trees have grown a little bit and then they can handle and livestock in so we're at that sort of nurturing phase at the moment in this first five years where you know the deer guards are on and we've really got to help these trees get going. Your job specifically is like the communications right that kind of thing? Yeah exactly so we have quite a range of audience you know we first want to tap into people who are unaware that temperate rainforests even exist in the UK but then as well you know there's people like myself and like Al who are fundamentally just big nerds for trees and we really want to see the array of different microhabitats all the way from the bryophytes to the fungus to the lichens and when it comes to diversity in the UK there really isn't anywhere that resembles the temperate rainforest. Part of the work that we're doing here is you know working with local tree planting contractors and we bring in volunteers into the landscape and to help with a lot of the restoration work that we're doing and yeah and it can just be a much more a much more diverse model from from rainforest walks and helping people reconnect. Get out of the mud! So yeah just helping people reconnect with these habitats that we've you know we've forgotten about it's that point of cultural amnesia and shifting baseline syndrome you know we grow up not really being in these woods anymore but you know back in the day we were rainforest people and yeah I think we're slowly starting to slowly starting to remember and that needle's shifting so. One thing that does really blow my mind is the idea that at one point the British Isles were nearly covered with temperate rainforest. I think the the current figures sort of suggest there's about a 20% coverage and I just can't imagine the islands like this just completely natural and it's exciting to be part of the plans to kind of reintegrate that back into our culture and part of our identity. I totally agree we've forgotten we've literally forgotten that we've got this and that we were part of it we lived in it um yeah you're really lucky to work here. Yeah well I was just about to say people like ourselves you know where we can come and be part of this we are part of a very small minority as well um but hopefully that changes you know and I do believe that as awareness grows more and more people will get involved and you know like Al and Merlin have explained it can be quite a lucrative business model for landowners to really reconsider the posterity of their land use. Yeah people are motivated by money that's the that's the kind of underlying thing. It is true it is but there's a very happy marriage to be made between profitability and um sustainability yeah sustainability exactly. I totally agree. You ever been for a swim? Not here but there's a lovely natural bath that we have down there. Yeah yeah I've seen it yeah and the sauna too. I just want to say a huge thank you to the Thousand Year Trust for having me back and please do head to the description to find out how you can get involved with them, Planet Wild and of course how you can support Leave Curious over on Patreon. For now if you want to keep watching the channel then please check out the video on the screen but in the meantime thanks for watching Leave Curious.