Celtic rainforest in Wales dealing with extinction disaster, ecologists warns

An “extinction crisis” is going on in Britain’s temperate rainforests the place one of the crucial international’s rarest mosses, lichens and liverworts are vanishing, ecologists have warned.

Also referred to as Celtic rainforests, temperate rainforests are discovered essentially alongside the United Kingdom’s western coasts.

A survey of Welsh rainforests in 2024 discovered handiest 22% had been in a excellent situation because of air pollution, fragmentation and invasive species.

“When this tree came down, in a flash we lost a species,” mentioned ecologist Sabine Nouvet a couple of 500-year-old oak in Eryri National Park, often referred to as Snowdonia, which fell all over Storm Darragh in December.

The tree used to be house to probably the most UK’s highest identified populations of an extraordinary lichen, the lack of which used to be “symbolic of the species crisis, the extinction crisis, that we are facing now”, mentioned Ms Nouvet.

Ms Nouvet, a rainforest marketing consultant with PlantLife, a member of the Alliance for Wales’ Rainforests, mentioned the fallen tree’s bark used to be as soon as house to greater than 60 varieties of lichen.

The rarest used to be the minuscule rinodina isidioides – its tiny constructions, when observed thru a hand lens, resemble its not unusual title, skeletal arms.

It lives handiest on timber a minimum of 300 years previous and in prerequisites discovered completely within the rain-soaked valleys of western Ireland and Britain.

Temperate rainforests happen on lower than 1% of the planet’s floor and Wales has across the world necessary examples of the habitat.

The particular habitat’s twisted branches, dappled mild and moss-covered understorey as soon as lined a lot of the rustic, however is now handiest present in remoted spaces together with the Woodland Trust’s Coed Felenrhyd close to Blaenau Ffestiniog, Gwynedd.

December’s typhoon “hammered the forests around here”, mentioned Ms Nouvet.

She mentioned a minimum of six historical timber, described as “grandmothers” of the woodland, had been misplaced in Coed Felenrhyd.

The presence of skeletal finger on a type of timber indicated “that this valley has got clean air, it has ancient forest, that this tree was, for some reason, really old and then we lost it”, she added.

There is hope the skeletal finger species can cling on within the valley after clippings had been relocated to 5 different previous timber within reach.

Ms Nouvet mentioned the purpose used to be for the clippings to seed the bark beneath, however the procedure may just take as much as a decade.

There is set 33,024 hectares, or 46,000 soccer pitches, of rainforest left in Wales.

Storms are simply probably the most threats to historical woodlands corresponding to Coed Felenrhyd which, consistent with the State of Wales Rainforest record, quilt simply 4.3% of nation’s rainforest panorama.

Much of this rainforest lacks connectivity to identical habitats as a result of it’s surrounded through farms or woodlands planted with non-native species.

Some are grazed inappropriately, the survey mentioned, and lots of are suffering from rhododendrons that smother the woodland flooring in a dense color that local species can not tolerate.

Farmer and retired forester Aled Thomas mentioned the Celtic rainforest have been “grazed since the beginning of time”, resulting in the formation of those woodlands.

But conservation efforts up to now noticed many historical woodlands fenced off.

“They have grown wild with invasive species coming in so none of the natural flowers associated with this type of woodland have been present,” Mr Thomas defined.

Mr Thomas grazes small Dexter farm animals in Coed y Gribin, a pocket of rainforest controlled through the RSPB close to Dolgellau.

“They will provide a habitat for a much more diverse species range by their hooves marking the ground, driving in acorns, rolling on the ground and they’ll graze anything and everything,” he mentioned.

“They eat brambles like they are having supper.”

Each animal is fitted with a GPS tracker and an alarm that trains them to stay to spaces that want grazing and clear of delicate portions of the woodland.

“The landscape has changed dramatically because the cows have been here for about three seasons and you notice there’s very little bracken and there are bluebells coming up.”

Mr Thomas mentioned farms with extra woodlands had been the important thing to linking up remoted portions of the rainforest.

“You just don’t need a field for growing cows, you can grow food by grazing in woodland and the benefits from that are huge to the forest and the farm.”

Wales has a world duty to give protection to the Celtic rainforest, mentioned PlantLife’s Adam Thorogood.

“We’ve got a really unique situation here in Wales where we’ve got some vital areas of habitat, a type of rainforest we don’t really find anywhere else on Earth.

“People do not even realise that we have got temperate rainforest right here… proper in your doorstep.

“It’s there to be explored, there to be enjoyed, and there’s a huge diversity of species of plant but also other flora and fauna.”

He mentioned passion from the general public within the Celtic rainforest used to be coming at a time when it used to be underneath monumental force and important funding used to be had to safe its long run.

Natural Resources Wales has been requested to remark.