Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall is helping double one of England’s last surviving temperate rainforests, where 1,200 young trees have already been planted at one site alone as part of wider expansion efforts.According to a report by The Guardian, the Duchy estate, which owns a third of Dartmoor National Park, has promised to double the size of two ancient rainforest areas under its care by the early 2040s. The plan covers Black-a-Tor Copse and Wistman’s Wood, two rare groups of ancient oak trees hidden inside the Devon national park.The pledge comes alongside a new £30 million government funding package given out through the Farming in Protected Landscapes fund. The dedicated grants aim to restore wildlife spaces and ancient woods across England, stretching from Dartmoor up to the Lake District.Temperate rainforests are among the rarest natural habitats on Earth. While surviving pieces exist across western Scotland, Cornwall, Devon, Wales and parts of Cumbria, most are in poor health because farm animals have grazed on them for many decades.
Campaigners push for wider land recovery
The new pledge follows a campaign by the Dartmoor Nature Alliance (DNA), a group that gathered at Black-a-Tor Copse to demand that rainforest areas across the whole national park be doubled in size.Sitting along the West Okement River valley, the 29-hectare Black-a-Tor Copse features short, tightly packed oak trees covered in thick moss and lichens. 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 only survive where heavy granite rocks or spiky gorse bushes block farm animals from eating them.Welcoming the new targets, Emma Magee, head of communities and nature on Dartmoor at the Duchy of Cornwall, outlined the estate’s expanded environmental goals.“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 brings to these rare, beautiful and important habitats.”However, campaigners stress that long-term recovery depends on keeping farm animals away from the edges of the woods.Lisa Schneidau from the Dartmoor Nature Alliance explained that heavy livestock grazing stops young saplings from growing into full trees.“These woodlands are part of our heritage – they are some of the best in Europe – and yet they are not in a good condition,” Schneidau said. “To extend and regenerate them we need to exclude grazing around these areas, because all of these sites are dying on their roots. We are not talking about much land area – we are talking about a gesture towards nature. We could see a lot more woodland along the valley areas that are not particularly good for grazing and are really marginal for farming.”
The ancient woodland has only survived in spots where there is natural protection by granite boulders or spiky gorse (Photograph: Fern Leigh Albert)
Collecting seeds and protecting young trees
Work to restore the land is already happening inside the valleys. Government environmental agency Natural England recently placed metal guards around small tree stumps near the top of the valley to protect growing oaks from being eaten by livestock.Local charity Moor Trees is growing new native trees using acorns picked directly from the ancient oaks. Last autumn, volunteers collected 800 acorns from Black-a-Tor Copse to grow in their tree nursery, preparing strong young trees to be planted back into the valley later.“We are acutely aware of the impact that land management practices on the moor have on the ability of these precious habitats to naturally regenerate and be resilient,” said Helen Aldis, chief executive of Moor Trees.At nearby Wistman’s Wood, hands-on planting is already far along, with Moor Trees planting 1,200 saplings over the past two years to help the wood grow beyond its old boundaries.
Farm grazing rights and shared land
The plan to grow more trees faces everyday challenges over how local land is used. An internal Natural England report seen by The Guardian pointed out that farm animals eating young shoots remains the main threat to Black-a-Tor Copse. The report stated “the most pressing concern around woodland condition here is the suppression of recruitment by livestock browsing” and concluded that “the arguments for increasing woodland cover at Black-a-Tor copse seem conclusive”.Solving this issue requires working with around 200 local farmers, known as commoners, who hold legal rights to graze their animals across the moor. At Black-a-Tor, the unfenced trees sit right between two areas of shared land managed by the Okehampton commoners. The Dartmoor Commoners’ Council did not reply to requests for comment before publication.Author Guy Shrubsole, whose book The Lost Rainforests of Britain made these woods famous and sparked local action, welcomed the Duchy’s news but called for even bigger goals. Shrubsole wants to see a doubling of rainforest area across all of Dartmoor’s shared land, using both natural seed growth and active tree planting where woods have completely disappeared.At the edge of Black-a-Tor Copse, tiny oak shoots are already starting to poke up out of the dirt.“The woodland is just waiting,” said Tony Whitehead of the Dartmoor Nature Alliance. “It has been waiting for a long time for us to just back off a little bit, reduce the grazing pressure and allow these amazing forests to come back to life.”
