Life finds a way: in search of Englandâs lost, forgotten rainforests
Gnarled oak trees in Wistmanâs Wood, an eight-acre fragment of temperate rainforest in Devon. Photograph: Ian Dagnall/Alamy
Much of Britainâs temperate rainforest has been destroyed â but it can sometimes regenerate. The race is on to map what survives and restore what we can
Thu 29 Apr 2021 01.00 EDT
Few people realise that England has fragments of a globally rare habitat: temperate rainforest. I didnât really believe it until I moved to Devon last year and started visiting some of these incredible habitats. Temperate rainforests are exuberant with life. One of their defining characteristics is the presence of epiphytes, plants that grow on other plants, often in such damp and rainy places. In woods around the edge of Dartmoor, in lost valleys and steep-sided gorges, Iâve spotted branches dripping with mosses, festooned with lichens, liverworts and polypody ferns.
£40m second round of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund opens for applications
Environmental charities and partners across England to benefit from fund which will create and retain jobs while restoring nature and tackling climate change.
From:
9 March 2021
Grants of up to £2 million each are now available to help the nation build back greener from the coronavirus pandemic, the government announced today [Tuesday 9 March].
The second round of the Green Recovery Challenge fund will award up to £40 million in grants to environmental charities and their partners across England to create and retain jobs while restoring nature and tackling climate change.
All projects must contribute to at least one of the following themes of the Green Recovery Challenge Fund:
Two Cumbrian environmental organisations have been awarded grants totalling £637,500. West Cumbria Rivers Trust will receive £388,000 for its ‘Restoring the Derwent Catchment’ project, which showcases nature recovery within a farmed landscape facing threats, including a rapid decline in nature and increase in severe flooding. New habitats will also be created and existing habitats joined together, increasing resilience of the catchment to climate change. Cumbria Wildlife Trust has been awarded £249,500 for its project, ‘Cumbria Peatland Restoration’ which will restore 302 hectares of peatland within the Lake District National Park, and survey a further 3,000 hectares to develop new restoration sites. The funding comes as part of the Government’s £80m Green Recovery Challenge Fund, aiming to kick-start a pipeline of nature-based projects to restore nature, tackle climate change and connect people with the natural environment. It will be distributed on behalf o