Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall is helping to double England’s last surviving temperate rainforests, with 1,200 young trees already planted in one spot alone as part of a massive expansion effort.The Duchy Estate, which owns a third of Dartmoor National Park, has pledged to double the size of two ancient rainforest areas under its care by the early 2040s, according to a report in The Guardian. The scheme includes Black-a-Tor Copse and Wistman Wood, two rare groups of ancient oak trees hidden inside the Devon National Park.The pledge comes alongside a new government funding package of £30 million delivered through the Farming in Protected Landscapes Fund. The dedicated grant aims to restore wildlife spaces and ancient forests across England, from Dartmoor to the Lake District.Temperate rainforests are among the rarest natural habitats on Earth. While surviving fragments exist in parts of western Scotland, Cornwall, Devon, Wales and Cumbria, most are in poor health because farm animals have been grazing them for many decades.
Campaigners push for widespread land recovery
The new pledge follows a campaign by the Dartmoor Nature Alliance (DNA), a group which gathered at Black-a-Tor Copse to demand that the size of rainforest areas across the national park be doubled.Located along the West Ocement River valley, the 29-hectare Black-a-Tor Copse features small, tightly packed oak trees covered in thick moss and lichen. Dating back to the Bronze Age, the site is one of only three surviving rainforest fragments on Dartmoor. Experts estimate that similar oak woods once covered 20% of the British Isles. Today, these trees survive only where heavy granite rocks or thorny gorse bushes prevent farm animals from eating them.Welcoming the new targets, Emma Magee, head of communities and nature on Dartmoor in the Duchy of Cornwall, outlined the estate’s extended environmental targets.“The level and pace of commitment from the Duchy and our partners is increasing,” Magee said. “Our ambition is to double the extent of Duchy-managed Atlantic Rainforest on Dartmoor by the early 2040s, and we welcome the focus this campaign has placed on these rare, beautiful and important habitats.”However, campaigners insist that long-term recovery depends on keeping farm animals away from the forest edges.Lisa Schneidou of the Dartmoor Nature Alliance explained that heavy livestock grazing prevents young plants from becoming full trees.“These woodlands are part of our heritage – they are some of the best in Europe – and yet they are not in good condition,” Schnedau said. “To expand and revive them we need to exclude grazing around these areas, because all these sites are dying at their roots. We’re not talking about more land area – we’re talking about a feeling for nature. We can see a lot of forest in the valley areas which are not particularly good for grazing and are really marginal for farming.“
Ancient woodland survives only in places where there is natural protection by granite boulders or thorny gorse (Photo: Fern Leigh Albert)
Collecting seeds and protecting young trees
Land restoration work is already taking place inside the valleys. The government environment agency Natural England has recently installed metal guards around small tree stumps near the top of the valley to protect the growing oaks from being eaten by animals.Local charity Moor Trees is growing new native trees using acorns picked directly from ancient oaks. Last autumn, volunteers collected 800 acorns from Black-a-Tor copse to grow in their tree nursery, and later to produce strong young trees to be planted back in the valley.Helen Aldiss, chief executive of Moore Trees, said: “We are keenly aware that land management practices on wetlands have an impact on the ability of these precious habitats to naturally regenerate and be resilient.In nearby Wistmans Wood, where hand planting is already a thing, Moore Trees has planted 1,200 saplings over the past two years to help the wood grow beyond its old boundaries.
Agricultural grazing rights and common land
Plans to grow more trees face everyday challenges regarding local land use. An internal Natural England report seen by The Guardian suggests that farm animals eating young seedlings pose the main threat to black-a-tor copses. The report stated that “the greatest concern about the condition of the woodland here is the suppression of recruitment by livestock browsing” and concluded that “the arguments for increasing woodland cover in Black-a-Tor Copse appear to be conclusive”.Resolving the issue requires working with about 200 local farmers, called commoners, who have the legal right to graze their animals in the marsh. At Black-a-Tor, the unfenced trees lie exactly between two areas of shared land managed by the commons of Okehampton. Dartmoor Commoners Council did not respond to requests for comment before publication.Author Guy Shrubsole, whose book The Lost Rainforests of Britain made these forests famous and spurred local action, welcomed the news from the Duchy but called for even bigger targets. Shrubsole wants to double the rainforest area on all the shared land of Dartmoor, where forest has completely disappeared, by using both natural seed growth and active planting.At the edge of Black-a-Tor Copse, tiny oak shoots are already beginning to poke out of the dirt.“The woodland is just waiting,” said Tony Whitehead of the Dartmoor Nature Alliance. “It is long overdue for us to step back a bit, reduce grazing pressure and allow these amazing forests to rejuvenate.”