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we're embarking on a project to restore one of Scotland's most special habitats temperate rainforest here Oaks grow covered in masses of mosses and ferns Hazel and Birch are coated in rare lyans and the mighty Scots Pines can age and grow tall creating the perfect conditions for Native life beneath but this magical habitat is threatened across Scotland native Forest cover is scarce and Native temper Forest is even rarer this is due to a mix of factors which have long been degrading Scotland's natural systems one of them being the WID spread felling or shading out of native ancient woodlands and creation of non-native plantations these alien tree species out compete and suffocate the native Flora densely packed in regimented rows
there's nothing natural about these plantations this is why we're embarking on a project to remove these trees yes you heard that right here at Earth we really are cutting a forest and by working with the local community we'll allow the native and natural way of life to return to this patch of Scotland's temperate rainforest our project area is best access by boat so one icy and very cold morning we took a journey across lock AR cake is's just busy falling off the it I love oh gosh old people joining us for this video is ISA our Mossy Earth biologist who is our lead on this project Gus the expert botanist who you might remember from our Mountain Birch project here in Scotland kulan the forever puppy and
Liam and Angela of the arcade Community Forest our partners on this project who will hear more from later in this video here in ik we've got a few habitats here we've got a lovely little I guess it's a wet Woodland um transitional Woodland which comes in off the lock it's mainly older there's quite a few natural habitats but what I'm walking into now is uh one of the non-natives on our project area there's Larch Lodge pole and sier Spruce non-natives you'll find all across Scotland which are typically planted in these regimented blocks it was after the first world war and the creation of the forestry commission which saw the rapid increase of commercial plantations this meant that the UK had a readily
available stock of Timber but with every new Plantation Scotland's natural habitats were fading early on in our trip we visited one such place which perfectly captured this contrast this battle between native and non-native species so as you can see we're walking through one of the lovely non-native plantations and I don't know whether if I'm saddened or kind of impressed by this tree but that is that's awesome look at that skipping a sh skipping a Shar I think this Oak is one of the most impressive trees I've seen not least because of its stature or the fact that it's the last standing relic of a destroyed habitat but also because it still supports hundreds of species
there's blackeyed Susan um if we look at another bit especially if you look at here we've got all the little fruit bodies which have little kind of black bits on them so that's why it's called blackeyed Susan and that's really typical of these kind of Western Oceanic Woodlands it grows on slightly more acidic back um and then in amongst that we've got all sorts of oceanic Brites and mosses and liver warts like um spiny feather wart and Western ear wart are two the sort of typical ones but there's a lot of stuff on that tree I think I can see some situ growing in there yeah there's a few growing on it just up here tree with trees yeah it's a tree growing trees it's got Holly on it yeah this is
cool this is a tree which should be standing tall above a thriving native ecosystem instead it's nearly completely crowded out by Sr Spruce and as we're walking up the burn back in our project area it had a similar feeling small pockets of native life towered over by non-natives and within this area we have the ruins of an old settlement known as arnish a former home to people who' lived here at a time when the land might have been more natural a way of life we're going to try and get back to here's another pine that's succumbed to um having these non-native conifers around it's a shame because so see uh Scots pine really likes light it's quite light hungry um so when these are planted
around it they obviously grow up they shoot up much faster than the pine Camp compete so it was just crowded out and uh and died because of it this is the edge of our project area right and here they've been removing some of the some of the conifers and you can just see these pine trees which are just kind of breathing new life again right it's magical but the thing with this is that right now it doesn't look great does it no it doesn't look good at the minute um but it's kind of obviously this isn't an ideal situation in an Ideal World these non-natives never would have been planted on this uh Caledonian Pinewood site but they have been so yeah it's a case of we're going to have to crack a few eggs to make an
omelette I think this is really important to understand about our project and about Scotland in general to the unsuspecting eye it's very easy to see these plantations especially from afar and think look at all these trees ultimately mistaking them for something that's good something that's natural but in reality the opposite is true and what you're seeing here this patch of non-natives that have been failed although it might not look it this is an improvement a step in the right direction to achieving something like this so where we've come to now this is kind of special this is a pretty intact and natural example of temperate rainforest that is full of pine trees
old pine trees one thing I'm learning is that temperate rainforest here in Scotland looks a little bit different depending on the type of tree species that you have within it we're very much in the temperate zone still but here you've got these like massive old pints and it just feels like completely different and this is kind of a real nice example of what we're trying to achieve on our project area and here further down the hill in a patch of Hazel we found a very rare species this is yellow speckle belly a lyan which only grows in Old growth temperate rainforest it requires really moist conditions and throughout our trip we found many intriguing epiy the names given to the magical plants fungi and lyans that grow on other plants that
seem to be everywhere but one of my favorites was this is green satin Lykan to me it looked completely alien just wrapped around this birch tree it's these plants which really categorize the look and feel of temperate rainforest it's not a habitat which is defined by the types of tree species which grow within it instead it's defined by the environmental and climactic conditions in which those trees are found unsurprisingly temperate rainforests require High annual rainfall and pretty consistent average temperatures where doesn't get too hot in the summer nor too cold in the winter so when these conditions occur where there's trees and where there's Woodlands you get temperate rainforest and it creates the
perfect conditions for all of the epes all of the Brites and lyans and seemingly everything is just covered in a wonderful massive life I mean look at this wall look at this tree really makes us have that just feel really special and I think quite mythical and wouldn't be surprised if we're going to see a couple of fairies in here and it's this magic which is completely lost in the dense and lifeless non-native plantations removing these trees is going to be a considered and steady process this is for a couple of reasons the first being that we have wood ants throughout the non-natives obviously we're going to have Harvesters coming in here and taking these trees out and wood ANS like to live on the edges of
Woodland so as we're coming along here uh we'll just need to make sure that the workmen they'll obviously be briefed and trying their best not to impact on any advanc but they'll be supervised so there'll be somebody on the ground making sure that we're yeah not uh being as low impact as possible basically Isa mentioned here that we'll have Harvesters in to remove trees and we will do for large parts of the area but we'll also be using more traditional slower and low impact methods to take the non-natives out Simon and his logging horse tazan will be more suitable to these ecologically sensitive areas and the more inaccessible and wetter areas removing the trees using more traditional and slow methods will
give the land more time to recover and respond to these changes this is a rough map of the area and here in yellow you can see the areas where we would like to remove the non-natives but it would be good to get a more detailed map of the area which is why we are resorting to mapping things with the Drone that is after waiting around for the Scottish Mist to disperse so the fog and the Mist is cleared now it's kind of all moved down into the Glenn and this means that we can now begin to map this area with the Drone and this should be interesting and that's because the Drone will be flying autonomously so it's going to kind of just follow a transact and it's going to go up and down the project area so at
least we'll be able to see it now we've got the helipad we're taking this kind of thing very seriously now you're an experienced drone pilot right all yes incredibly experienced was that convincing it's upside down oh sugar okay did you get that in the experience you're putting the battery in it I don't I should probably do that Isa did eventually manage to get the mapping done and this is the resulting atho photo Mosaic we've also posted this in your Mossy Earth account where we post frequent project updates showing stories on the ground around as they happen at the projects for us these highquality drone maps are important to show how the site changes over time in addition to
drone mapping on the ground Woodland herbivore impact assessments have been undertaken at the site for a number of years and they will be continued the success of our rewinding projects depends on how well they interact with and are connected to the people living closest to them which is why we are really excited that this project is being led by the community specifically arcade Community Forest who are also part of the Northwoods rewarding Network we're really excited to be working with moss Earth at arish it's a really exciting project for us at arade Community Forest we're removing the non-native Timbers that were planted in the 1970s and that will allow the native Forest to regrow from its
refugees yeah arish is important to um arade Community forest and the local community because it's sign ific in having the remains of an old settlement there it shows us that there have been people in and working with the woods for centuries so it's got a lovely atmospheric place you can almost feel the you know people who've who have lived and worked there before so it's special to us to be able to come in and take out these um plantations trees these non-native P um Pines and uh sprues and to take it back to um to start again for the other trees to come in and um and we can start to see how these people would have lived we just like to say thank you to the supporters of moss Earth for their very generous
contribution towards our project it's it's really allowing us to restore the site which we otherwise wouldn't be able to do without this support and if you're not yet a member but would like to support this kind of work then please consider becoming a member at Mossy Earth the link is in the description and pinned in a comment down below I mean look at this pine tree just completely dead would have been surrounded by non-natives but now they've been removed you know it's kind of like a symbol of what could have been and you know when you look across here it does look kind of sorry for itself you know it looks like something of a war zone you've got trees that look like they've been like hacked down and you've
got these trenches where it's been plowed in the past and you know whoever thought it was a good idea to plant non-natives here in such high numbers it's just crazy you know um but you know this landscape might look sorry for itself but this is a landscape which is in recovery and I think over the next 10 20 30 years we'd be really surprised at how this landscape recovers if this is a project which you want to support then you can become a Mossy Earth member where you'll be contributing to a whole host of different rewarding projects all over the world now it's really exciting and it's a really impactful way to contribute to Nature coming back so thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one I the life of oh that should be on film in on
another filming mission in Scotland and another Rob tumble are you all right yeah I'm fine yeah so
