ENVIRONMENTALISTS are demanding a £500 million commitment from the Scottish Government to make good its pledge to save the country’s unique rainforest.
Key green charities are ramping up the pressure on the Scottish Government to make good a COP26 pledge to save the temperate rainforest, ahead of a keynote speech tonight on the topic by Mairi McAllan, Scotland’s minister for environment, biodiversity and land reform.
Woodland Trust Scotland, Plantlife Scotland and RSPB Scotland say a commitment now to the huge sum is needed to save the key habitat, home to a unique and globally important collection of lichens, liverworts, mosses, and other wildlife.
At the COP26 climate talks, McAllan pledged Scotland’s Atlantic rainforest would be saved, saying: “We want to protect and expand this precious environment and we have committed to do so in the life of this Parliament.”
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The green groups hope McAllan will announce substantial support tonight but are concerned it might not be enough to do the job properly.
They say the Government should put up at least £250m in taxpayers’ cash, which would enable the charities to work with officials to lever in the rest of the cash from other sources and start to restore the rainforest over the next 10 years.
As well as being essential to retain and enhance biodiversity, the restored woodlands will help absorb carbon and further the fight against climate change.
Tim Hall, head of estates and programmes at the Woodland Trust Scotland, said: “The Scottish Government made a commitment to rainforest action during COP26 … Woodland Trust Scotland, Plantlife Scotland and RSPB Scotland warmly welcomed this commitment. But as we wait to hear how that pledge will be delivered, we feel it is important to stress there is no cheap solution.
“We estimate the scale of investment to restore this precious habitat to be around £500m over at least 10 years. This is the kind of investment needed to secure ecosystem restoration and reverse the decline of Scotland’s rainforest.
“This money will pass through local communities supporting green jobs in economically fragile areas, so should be looked on as an investment in the future of people, nature and climate. Without funding of this order, Scotland’s rainforest will be lost, not expanded.”
Scotland has Europe’s last substantial rainforest, and like the Amazon or other tropical rainforests, the temperate rainforest here is home to a vast array of interdependent life.
It used to run in a swathe down the country’s west coast from Cape Wrath to Campbeltown. Only about a fifth remains, much of that in poor condition as a result of overgrazing and invasive species. The remaining area totals around 70,000 acres.
Of the £500m price tag suggested, around half would be needed just to deal with invasive alien rhododendron ponticum in the west, which is overwhelming large areas.
Scotland's invasive “rhoddies” are a cross between the Mediterranean ponticum and cold-hardy North American varieties of rhododendron, perfectly suited to the cool damp climate. They shut light out from the forest floor and eventually take over forests.
Removing them is a labour-intensive business, as each stem has to be cut out and burned, and the stump injected with weedkiller.
The rest of the £500m estimate would be needed for deer management, conservation grazing, planting new trees and other hands-on conservation work, plus the administration, planning and other back-up to make the scheme work.
Forestry consultant and rhododendron clearance expert Gordon Gray Stephen made the cost estimates for the charities. He said: “I’m an optimist – I believe there are compelling reasons for the Scottish Government to act on this, so I have a strong hope and believe they will come up with substantial sums. It should have been done sooner – the rhoddie problem grows exponentially and every delay makes matters worse.”
McAllan will give the keynote speech to the Alliance For Scotland’s Rainforest group at an event tonight at the Royal Botanical Society in Edinburgh. The alliance is made up of charities including those calling for the cash injection, other independent organisations such as landowners’ group Scottish Land and Estates, and Government agencies including NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), and Scottish Forestry.
A number of projects are under way under the Alliance banner to restore areas of rainforest, but at the moment the Government is only spending a total of around £2m a year on rhododendron clearance. Deer control is overseen by local deer management groups made up of landowners who may want deer numbers kept high because of their stalking business.
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