Did you know there are rainforests in the UK?

The COVID-19 pandemic presented our organisation with the opportunity to do more in our base country as we couldn’t fly out to our original project zone.

Besides our efforts to save the rainforests of West Africa, we have also been looking into how we can help to protect the UK’s woodlands and temperate rainforests.

An Unlikely Adversary

Sadly, the problems that these habitats face are already worryingly diverse, with forests being lost to overgrazing, invasive plant species and disease, to name but a few. Much has already been lost, and what is left is fragmented, broken and often isolated in a wider landscape.

Grazing is by far the biggest direct threat, with much of the rainforest habitat in particular facing a level of grazing that will impact their long-term survival, diversity and regeneration. Surprisingly, the biggest threat actually comes from deer, as livestock is only responsible for 20% of rainforest overgrazing.

What We’re Doing About It

We source all of our meat through British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC) accredited stalkers, this is so we can do our bit to help reduce the detrimentally high population numbers of these species.

Furthermore, we only source from parts of the country where these species are causing trouble for their respective ecosystems: Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Devonshire.

We have recently begun talks with local organisations to start reforestation programmes in this country’s forested havens - watch this space!

Stay tuned for some exciting updates as we develop our post-pandemic roadmap for The Rainforester’s venture into UK woodland and temperate rainforest!