Protect Earth has landed a veto on decades-long commercial clear-felling at High Wood, Liskeard.
We are happy to announce that our rainforest restoration project has finally begun at High Wood - Protect Earth’s first community woodland. Since acquiring the ancient woodland in March 2021, one of our first goals was to reverse years of policy mandating the replenishment of non-native coniferous species.
We aim to restore High Wood as the beautiful Cornish temperate rainforest it once was. Thanks to some internal heroes, we’ve secured permission from the Forestry Commission to return native species to this beautiful stretch of land.
What was High Wood before Protect Earth bought it?
To give a little context, this land we’re now looking after in High Wood came with a Felling License, which provides the landowner with the right to cut down trees, just as the timber company had been doing over the years. Commercially, it makes sense for fast-growing conifer trees to be planted, increasing the regular turnover of timber for sale.
While true conifers can grow into majestic trees, they are incredibly damaging to a site’s biodiversity—their fallen needles acidify the soil, and their broad boughs block out the light. This makes it difficult for native tree species, ferns, moss and the like to get a foothold.
What legacy burdens did we inherit with High Wood?
Along with this fantastic piece of land and its Felling License we inherited, there was also a Restocking Agreement.
The Restocking Agreement in place for High Wood would have had us locked into planting non-native coniferous species and keep making sure they grew to full capacity along with other recently planted conifers. Again, masses of conifers hamper diversity - within plants and then animals. There’s already enough of this in the UK!
But this land has too much potential, and the climate in Cornwall is perfect for bringing this piece of Cornwall back from the brink and building a temperate rainforest! Very ambitious stuff!
That’s what we fought for here at High Wood - changing minds on the land’s use to rebuild the land into a temperate rainforest.
And thanks to Steve the Ecologist’s quick thinking and clever persuasion and other heroes at the Forestry Commission fighting our corner, we’ve finally triumphed over the restocking Agreement’s non-native species clause!
The future of High Wood as a temperate rainforest
Temperate rainforests are some of Earth’s rarest yet most precious ecosystems. They occur in areas with high rainfall, humidity, and mild temperatures year-round – a climatic combination known as ‘high oceanicity’. The environment must also be wet enough to support growth, usually between 1,200 and 1,400mm of annual rainfall.
Around 20% of Great Britain’s land is perfect for temperate rainforest growth – nearly all of western Scotland, Cumbria in the northwest, and parts of northern England, more than half of Wales, and Cornwall in the south.
Twenty per cent of the British Isles may once have been filled with ancient oak, birch, ash, pine and hazel woodland - made even more diverse by open meadows, boulders, crags, ravines and river gorges!
These ancient and delicate woodlands started to be cleared in the Bronze Age and the medieval period. Some have been lost more recently because of forestry policies and agriculture.
A 2018 Joint Nature Conservation Committee report said the UK has an “international responsibility” to protect its temperate rainforests as vital habitats.
Today, 1% of the UK’s land area is home to these rainforests. These forests are the most carbon-dense ecosystems on the planet.
As our Ecologist, Steve Wiltshire, explains, “The British Isles is increasingly devoid of wildlife; we should have loads of different species. We’re losing species that should be here at a dramatic rate.”
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Steve the Ecologist checking and documenting what volunteers have planted [/caption]
This is why it’s such a massive win for all of us to have overcome this Restocking Agreement and get permission to start developing High Wood into a temperate woodland!
The High Wood transformation plan
Now along the base of the valley sit 1,000 saplings of native Beech, Oak, Alder, Aspen, Cornish Elm, Wild Service, Goat Willow, Silver Birch, and Rowan. All these beautiful broadleaf species will generate heaps of biodiversity and give homes to wildlife.
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Volunteers having fun together planting hedgerows [/caption]
To push that biodiversity further, we’ve rescued one compartment of native self-seeded saplings from the young, non-native conifers that would have eventually smothered them. Most of the saplings from the previous stock are now done away with. While plenty of fully-grown sentinels still haunt the north-facing slope, our triumph in switching up the Restocking Agreement means they won’t stifle the biodiversity for much longer.
Where allowed and appropriate, we have removed the remainder of the light-blocking brutes and replaced them with a smattering of native, deciduous species. We’ve given the new saplings trying to take root on the lightless, acidified forest floor a chance to flourish.
We’re encouraging new growth by spreading nutrients from the newly mulched oppressors (i.e. non-native coniferous trees). The trees felled here are already being put to good use, one way or another, and preferably in a way that keeps their carbon locked in.
To sum up
It’ll take some time for High Wood to be fully restored, but gaining permission to restock with broadleaf species has been a major step forward for this project, one that we’re proud of having accomplished. This is a landmark win for this once clear-fell-bound woodland and for the restoration of a very, very unique type of woodland - temperate rainforests!
Sources
https://www.nationalworld.com/news/environment/british-rainforests-temperate-rainforest-uk-3899744