Cornwall Wildlife Trust has a unique opportunity to restore a lost habitat: a temperate rainforest. 

Your gift to this appeal will help:

• Create more space for threatened wildlife, including woodland birds and mammals
• Plant native trees, such as sessile oak, rowan and hazel
• Encourage natural regeneration, through which trees self-seed and spread
• Restore a globally rare habitat - temperate rainforests cover just 1% of the world's surface
• Take part in the fight against climate change

Cornwall is home to some of the last remaining areas of temperate rainforest in the UK - and, with your support, we have a chance to restore this magical and important habitat at West Muchlarnick, near Looe. (You can learn about this project in more detail here.)

Donate to restore temperate rainforest in Cornwall 

Your generosity will protect threatened woodlands birds and mammals, including redstarts, pied flycatchers, stoats and mice, as well as rare fungi, insects and a huge array of lush green mosses, liverworts, ferns and lichen. 

By donating today you will help plant native trees, provide fencing to protect new shoots, and fund important survey work to monitor impact on wildlife and carbon capture.

With your help, we can bring back this lost ecosystem.

Donate to restore temperate rainforest in Cornwall 

What are temperate rainforests? 

Temperate rainforests are a globally rare habitat. Covering just 1% of the world's surface, they are even rarer than tropical rainforests.

Long ago, they would have covered large areas of Cornwall, hosting amazing biodiversity. These habitats are found in places influenced by the sea, with a mild, wet, humid oceanic climate.

These conditions are perfect for moisture-loving plants and wildlife: native trees like sessile oak, rowan and hazel are clothed in lichen, mosses and ferns, supporting an array of rare fungi, woodland birds and mammals, such as hazel glove fungus, pied flycatchers and redstarts, and stouts and mice.  

Now only small patches of temperate rainforest remain. They were destroyed for timber logging, agriculture, transport and development, and continue to be under threat from air pollution, overgrazing and invasive species. 

Your donation will protect the wildlife and biodiversity that these unique habitats support. 

Restore a temperate rainforest in Cornwall

Like all woodland areas, the trees absorb carbon from the air and store it in their branches, trunk, leaves and roots. However, the trees in a temperate rainforest can go further: their epiphytes - the lichens, mosses and ferns growing the surface of another tree - will act as carbon stores in their own right. Learn more about this project.

Your support will enable us to plant more trees, enabling more epiphytes to grow, increasing the potential for storing carbon, which is vital in our fight against climate change. 

Donate to plant trees and restore temperate rainforest 

Donate to our Temperate Rainforest Appeal

temperaterainforestappeal