Britain's Lost Rainforests are Coming Back - Here's How 

I've been wearing a pair of Vivo Magna FG for a while and I can really recommend them. I think it's also worth noting/appreciating their repair service. I ususally wear my shoes until they're practically falling off my feet and knowing that I can repair instead of replace them is something I really appreciate.

@@Jack93885 yeah absolutely, great point dude!

I don't have a problem with a sponsorship deal like this. But advertising standards (and RU-vid TOS) require a clear and unambiguous audible "sponsored by" declaration BEFORE the ad read or endorsement bit. And the link in the video description should also be declared.

@@Adderkleetregarding sponsored content RU-vid requires creators to check the box for promotional content before uploading, which I’ve done & a message is displayed at the start of the video 👍

Literally just bought a pair. Wish I’d seen this first 🤣

Keep fighting, we cheer for you!

We need more detail. Publicise. Organise.

Developers in a wet forest climate is the most mental thing that exists How can the government implement bad schemes like ULEZ because of the global environment but then completely forget about the actual British environment

At this point we should stop calling those people "developers". Keep fighting the good fight!

Developers........BOO,...HISS!

could you imagine if they were covered in trees? what an epic land scape that would be. cheers :)

Yep Wales is really Barron one of my favourite features about Wales is there stone walls they blend in with nature so well and another thing is the roads majority of which follow the terrain which is what roads should do which gives you the feeling that you’re following the landscape bringing you closer to nature rather than just bulldozing through the landscape destroying habitats, ugly looking roads and just disconnecting you from the ground you drive on.

I'm hoping for the day when the grants for farming dry up and sheep won't be profitable anymore.

there are woods but so much of it is conifer plantations. There is a small jewel near me in the south east of wales where they are gradually replacing conifers with natives. Really need to see more of it.

I’m a Park Ranger in a small country park in South Wales and we have a small but very phenomenal temperate rainforest…. It’s such a special ecosystem and one I hope gets a huge increase in government and local council funding in the future! This problem is fixable if the priority and funding is high enough! Great video Rob 😁 keep inspiring people

yes over grazing really does kill the recovery our native forests. addressing this problem is paramount for real recovery

"Master hunters" sure is intriguing, like we have rainforests though, they never went anywhere, but yeah, will gotta remember master hunters, never knew we were so Japanese.

Reintroducing wolves would actually be a better move.

Carnivores reporting for duty 🍽️

Need to stop eating them then 💚🌱🐾

Yes, it's rather enchanting. He's really trying to do something magical.

Tolkien died in 1973. I don’t think we’ve lost any forests since then.

@@krisjonesuk Tolkein was born in 1892. He was 18 in 1910. At the turn of the century, I have no doubt there would have been more woodlands around than in 1973. These would have been where he potentially spent his youth. Through his life he probably saw many of these places destroyed.

The most magical forest on the planet is still alive and well, the Redwoods in Northern California. I recommend a visit in your lifetime

In most of Europe, the late 19th and early 20th century were actually the low point for forests, and they've recovered since then because wood has largely been replaced first by coal, then oil and gas as a fuel source

From his time in uniform, Tolkien would've been only too aware how much the trenches on both sides depleted forests. That was the original reason for establishment of the UK Forestry Commission

thats really interesting, will be making a video on kelp this summer, so will take a look at this

Really looking forward to that video. If you find this to not be true, would you mind posting here?

@@LeaveCurious also very interested in the link! look forward to video

​@@LeaveCurious I found this: 'Coastal rainforests help regulate the flow of nutrients, sediments, and freshwater into the ocean, which can directly impact the health of kelp forests . Excessive runoff from deforestation or poor land management practices can lead to increased turbidity, sedimentation, and nutrient loading in coastal waters, negatively affecting kelp growth and survival. Conversely, healthy kelp forests help protect coastal areas from erosion and storm surges, creating calmer conditions that benefit coastal rainforests . The dense kelp canopies dampen wave energy, reducing the impact on shorelines and allowing sediments and nutrients to accumulate, supporting the growth of coastal vegetation. Furthermore, both ecosystems are significant carbon sinks, playing a vital role in mitigating climate change . Coastal rainforests sequester carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, while kelp forests absorb and store carbon in their biomass and in the ocean sediments through a process known as "blue carbon." The interconnectedness of these ecosystems highlights the importance of adopting an ecosystem-based management approach that considers the cumulative impacts on both terrestrial and marine environments . Protecting and restoring coastal rainforests and kelp forests can have synergistic benefits for biodiversity, climate regulation, and coastal resilience.

Yes, this! He should absolutely think about starting one, and other social media too - if he can reach the tiktok generation that could make a massive difference, and ditto for Mossy Earth and others.

Treeplanting 2-3 year barefoot trees, can aid, micrositing trees is huge planters must find unique and defensible planting sites taking the specific needs of the Species needs, spacing, and getting into the brush or slash as young trees do get hidden, may have time to take root then start maturing into taller, larger individuals especially when mindful of the many variables aiding in site selection.

Nothing beats Mads Mikkelsens brother, Lars Mikkelsen. Wonderful voice

The problem is the solution.

That is so very true, oak trees are not a pioneer species. If you plant them in open land, they don't survive without a lot of help. Merlin may want to plant a lot of pioneer species first, the oaks will appear by them self after a while.

yeah, it be really useful to know about these areas, patches of rain forest, from the perspective of recovery - maybe the zone is larger than we think

Here’s hoping 🙏🏼

You need to plant shrubs with thorns first. Then the wildlife will use it as shelter from predators and poop out seeds of trees. With the protection by the thorn bushes the tree saplings will grow tall and eventually shade out the thorn thicket. It's the natural succession!

also the republic of ireland!

You need to hurry then as many that I remember from childhood have disappeared over the last 10-20 years grubbed up , possibly for firewood as the land wasn't suitable for building houses on.

They do look a bit like the Great Plains out in North America though, which are entirely natural prairies (obviously a lot of agricultural usage there but large forests do not naturally grow there).

Does Wales really need more tourism? A little is good..A lot more is not. A lot more destroys the very thing the tourists have come to see,,to experience.

@@SirRobinDeSway I guess not. Though if you want to get the government on board they like to know they are getting something in return

It’s a place I’d love to visit :)

All temperate rain forests seem to be very different from one another. I've been in one in Bulgaria, it's part of the Colchian rainforests arc and it's very different from the American and British ones. All of them amazing places ❤

We have temperate rainforests in parts of Australia as well. The ones I've visited look nothing like the British rainforest 💚

I was just trying to look this up lol. Never been to either place so it’s hard to judge how different they would look in person. They both look very mossy lol.

I really don’t understand people who go to these places because they (presumably) recognise how beautiful and special they are, but then just chuck their rubbish all over the place. If you like a place enough to visit it, why would you want to ruin it? It doesn’t make sense to me.

makes me think the idea of Royal Parks should return: NOBODY save the King and his foresters allowed in. do that for 100 yrs and then open the parks so people can see...

he's got enough of england's land to himself already. EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION. teach people, most importantly children, about our conservation/countryside/rainforests that instil a sense of pride, wonder and shared ownership. This involves giving people the chance to experience it for themselves, not just see it in photographs in books about the royal estates.

I don't see the same extent of rubbish as you describe in the south east of Western Australia where we go for hikes, but you'll never escape the signs of inconsiderate people fully. It's tiresome, but we have to do it.

I was puzzled by the dog poo bags, but I have a theory about that. People going on a long walk don’t want to carry the bags on them because they stink, so they place them somewhere meaning to pick them up on the way back, but of course they inevitably forget. I carry a brightly coloured little bucket with a lid, when we go walking so I can dump my dog’s poo bags in it, and then dump the lot of them in the dog waste bin at the end of the walk. It probably makes me look a bit strange, but I don’t care as this works for me.

Merlin lives up to his name! I wish that he had his own RU-vid channel, he is incredible to listen to and many would support his channel if he had one. I hope this video and the reach it has will encourage him to make one and educate people even more! You can also add charity links to videos, so people can readily donate easier

That is correct the only difficulty is people, people are impatient and want instant effect whereas a natural succession requires time, the hawthorn and blackthorn react to browsing pressure by producing more thorns hence they become natural barbed wire.

@@ferret5772 Which is good when it happens that way, but large parts of Dartmoor, now grazing pressure has been reduced, get covered by bracken, gorse bushes and tough Molina grass. One has to ask which is the real natural Dartmoor? The present day landscape, the medieval landscape, the Bronze Age landscape, the post Ice-Age landscape, or the Ice Age Tundra?

@@imagseer what you are seeing is how nature actually does it in its own way , if you take one acre and strip it back to bare soil and then walk away from it nature will take over and over approx a sixty year time span it will grow into a forest , one hundred and fifty years later it will be an oak canopy go to five hundred years it will be a mature oak forest albeit on a small patch of land , nature is slow but steady and functions on a timescale we cant appreciate being a relatively short lived species in comparison to oak trees.

willow is an incredible species for stabilising soil. I wonder if lilacs are native to the Br Isles? ever try pulling up the roots of a lilac? good way to have a stroke.

@@Scriptorsilentum Willow, in all its varieties, is a key riparian and wet heathland pioneer species. Syringa vulgaris is an invasive.

whats your company called id be very interested, thanks

​@@charliecare3682it's called Into Wilderness Bushcraft

science thinks it's fairly close to breeding american butternut that are resistant to that japanese fungus that wiped them out. Here's hoping...

amazing first comment to see! thank you!

Ah well I don’t know about that, but thanks!

Maybe we should start using them as a food source since they seem to be thriving so well?

yeah tree planting is more than just putting trees in the ground - anything we can do to bring people out together into environments is crucial

is sycamore native to europe/UK?

@@Scriptorsilentum It's native to parts of Europe but not the UK. It spreads readily and so can replace our native trees in an ancient woodland. Native trees are much better for wildlife which is why we're replacing any new grown sycamores.

pleased you enjoyed the video :)

Definitely! It's beautiful up there. We even found ferns growing in the trees (covered head to foot in moss) along the Derwent near Cromford, where it's sheltered by cliffs. I'll have to start calling it that - it's certainly an area that deserves more attention.

It's a shame people tend to think of this area as exposed hilltops and grazing land, because the forested areas are absolutely beautiful. And much more fun to hike through on a hot day, the temperature and humidity difference under the canopy is amazing!

They are native to the UK, but possibly not to the area in the video. I doubt the claim about the much lower species count, too.

⁠@@TheorimligIt’s unfortunate that many ecologists don’t keep up with the latest literature. In much of my country the Netherlands this actually prevents having sustainable forests in the future because most of our native species are dying or already disappeared because of climate change and new pests and diseases (oak, ash, poplar, elm, maple, beech) we almost will have nothing left except willows and non natives… Also to get to your point it is true that beech is native even to scotland according to the lastest literature. But many ecologists still claim they are non native since that is what they learned back in the day.

​@@verycool6022Beech (Fagus sylvatica) is believed to be non-native to Cornwall. I speak from much observation and experience (I live in Cornwall and work as a botanist)- woodland dominated by Beech is far less diverse than woodlands dominated by Oak.

I believe I've read that beech woods support specialist, shade-tolerant plant species - fewer species than the oak, maybe, but often rare and valuable. (I'd also read that they're native to the southern UK, but from what everyone else is saying, it sounds like the literature's been shifting recently.)

@@verycool6022yeah that native/non-native line is a little blurry because every plant was an invader at one point lol

oh yes, love his videos, will have to get talking!

wonderful isn't it!

My feet are messed up my little toe sits under my other one and causes blisters. Can't go barefoot cos I work with cars 😭 shoes are messed up

@@FXCartel If you need a steel toe wide toe box shoe they do exist, just rare. Examples include the birkenstock QS 700 which is a 'nonslip, oil and petrol resistant, steel toed boot' with a wide toe box. If you have money to burn, gaucho ninja makes very high quality barefoot boots that are fully ISO rated safety barefoot boots. It just depends how much money you have and are willing to spend on not have blisters anymore.

Top of the cairngorms perhaps? That's pretty much arctic tundra.

@@todosmentira336 potentially

What rot. There are rainforest that haven't been touched nor modified. Do you have any evidence to back up your outrageous claim?

@@Gambit771 Except *perhaps* in the far reaches of Scotland, yes. There is basically nothing that hasn’t been either clear cut or managed. There may indeed be very old unmanaged rainforests that still exist, but I strongly doubt they are older than the 1200s. Bear in mind that the peak arable land usage in the islands was in the Bronze Age, and if I had to guess I would think very little if any icecap-retreat virgin growth remained by that time. But wood is essential for metallurgy, so also bear in mind that managed forests were constantly being planted and replanted even as far back as that.

Yes but it’s not surprising for a small temperate island with a long history of migration and settlement on the edge of a relatively densely populated continent - what are you comparing it to ? The wildernesses of the Americas ? They are on a totally different scale.

...or we could advocate for the reintroduction of apex predators

@@herokindon in a country with 278.98 people per square kilometre? Let's not even talk about food production and animal husbandry. You're in a fantasy land.

Get yourself there Nick mate! UK might be pretty well fragmented, but theres lots of beauty to see