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Manx Wildlife Trust to restore largest area of rainforest to date

Glen Auldyn © Graham Makepeace-Warne

Isle of Man to benefit from Aviva fund for temperate rainforest recovery

Today, Manx Wildlife Trust (MWT) announce a new project to restore a rainforest at Glen Auldyn thanks to The Wildlife Trusts’ long-term partnership with Aviva. At 1,124 acres – with 750 acres suitable for rainforest habitat – it is the largest plantable area to enter The Wildlife Trusts’ rainforest recovery programme so far and will be the biggest nature reserve in the Island. 

Rainforests of Britain & Ireland have been largely destroyed over hundreds of years and now cover less than 1% of Great Britain. The restoration of this precious habitat is part of a wider programme of nature-based projects funded by Aviva to remove carbon from the atmosphere and to help nature recover. 

Local communities in and around Ramsey in the north of the Isle of Man will be closely involved in the project and will benefit from increased access to nature, volunteering, educational and employment opportunities. Rainforest restoration will also provide cleaner air and water, and reduced risk from flooding in an area of high flood risk. 

A view over Glen Auldyn, showing hills covered with grass and a few trees, with a cloudy sky overhead

Glen Auldyn © Graham Makepeace-Warne

A view over Glen Auldyn, showing hills covered with grass

Glen Auldyn © Graham Makepeace-Warne

A hillside path through Glen Auldyn, going past hills covered with grass and some trees

Glen Auldyn © Graham Makepeace-Warne

The Wildlife Trusts’ partnership with Aviva funds the restoration of temperate rainforests in areas where they used to grow along the damper, western climes of Britain & Ireland. The few remaining fragments of rainforests in the Isle of Man are largely confined to the steep-sided gorges in the national glens, with many in close proximity to Glen Auldyn. 

Tree seeds will be gathered from the glens and grown in MWT’s nursery at Milntown at the base of Glen Auldyn. Volunteers are already involved in the tree nursery which was initially set up to provide trees for MWT’s rainforest restoration at Creg y Cowin and Glion Darragh. Local residents are invited to play a central role in the project which will spend an initial two years conducting ecological surveys of the moorland, peatland, glens and existing woodland. During this time the site will continue to be grazed, and thereafter MWT is keen to showcase Glen Auldyn as a model of how Manx uplands could be best managed and farmed for people and wildlife alike. Continuing to farm appropriate areas is paramount to MWT. 

David Bellamy, Head of Conservation and Land at Manx Wildlife Trust, says:  

“We are thrilled to start this exciting new chapter to restore the Isle of Man’s natural heritage. The recovery of Glen Auldyn’s temperate rainforest will not only create an invaluable habitat for wildlife but will also provide multiple benefits for local communities, including reduced flood risk and greater access to beautiful woodland. This will also be an important contribution to our Island’s international obligation to protect and manage 30% of our land for nature by 2030.” 

Claudine Blamey, Chief Sustainability Officer at Aviva, said: 

 “It’s fantastic to see the ongoing restoration of temperate rainforests in the Isle of Man. Aviva is proud to support such a transformative project, which not only enhances the beauty and biodiversity of the Island but also provides lasting benefits to local communities, including green jobs, tourism and improved flood resilience, helping them get ready for the future.” 

Leigh Morris, Manx Wildlife Trust’s CEO says: 

“This is a landmark moment for MWT and the Isle of Man. Glen Auldyn is over seven times the size of our largest nature reserve and its size provides a fantastic opportunity for landscape scale nature conservation and create a model for how the Isle of Man uplands could be managed in future. It’s an inspiring example of how corporate businesses can benefit wildlife and increase carbon sequestration to mitigate climate change. I am in no doubt that our whole-nation Biosphere could be world leading in this area.” 

Tree species at Glen Auldyn will include native Manx oak, downy birch, mountain ash, holly, alder, willows and hazel. Manx Wildlife Trust hopes the reserve will become a haven for threatened birds such as hen harrier, for which the Isle of Man is internationally important, ring ouzel and wood warblers (which both used to breed in the area but are no longer found breeding in the Isle of Man). Wet conditions will support an abundance of mosses, liverworts, lichens, and ferns – many of which grow on the trees or cover boulders and ravines. It will become a special place for nature and the Island’s whole-nation UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. 

Silver Birch

©Mark Hamblin/2020VISION

Female hen harrier

Hen harrier (female) ©Mark Hamblin/2020VISION

A wood warbler with its head thrown back, singing

Wood Warbler (Phylloscopus sibilatrix) in sesile oak forest Wales - Andy Rouse/2020VISION

Ring ouzel

Ring ouzel ©Margaret Holland

Editor's Notes

Aviva partnership 
Please see Aviva’s press release ‘Aviva helps restore rare native British rainforests’ (February 2023) for more information about Aviva’s long-term commitment to nature-based solutions, net-zero ambitions and carbon capture potential of rainforest restoration.  

Rainforests and climate change 
As trees grow, they absorb carbon from the atmosphere which is stored in the soil, roots, trunks, and branches of the tree itself. The epiphytes – the lichens, mosses and ferns covering the trees – also carry out this function, and so British rainforests have huge potential for storing carbon. To achieve the UK’s net-zero ambition, it is estimated that woodland cover needs to increase to at least 17% across the UK by 2050 (it is currently at 13% though, unlike native rainforests, much of this is non-native plantation which does little to benefit nature).  

IUCN Nature-based solutions standard 
A critical component of this scheme for The Wildlife Trusts is that Aviva is investing in a range of benefits from the restoration of British rainforest; including but not limited to carbon. The biodiversity, adaptation and community benefits of these projects are as important and are a central part of the investment which Aviva is making. The Wildlife Trusts helped to pilot the IUCN global standard on nature-based solutions, which aims to ensure that nature-based solutions benefit biodiversity, health and well-being, and climate resilience. These aspects of the project are core to the aims of both Aviva and The Wildlife Trusts and we will be following the standard as part of this project.   

30 by 30 – protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030 
The Wildlife Trusts’ 30 by 30 commitment takes its lead from The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the landmark agreement between nations that was agreed at COP15 in December 2022. The CBD has proposed that at least 30% of the world’s land and seas should be protected to prevent the destruction of the planet’s biodiversity, as part of a global framework to protect the Earth’s plant and wildlife. At less than 30% cover, habitat patches are too small and isolated, and species richness (the number of species in any one area), abundance and survival rates decline. This is what has led to the UK becoming one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. Where habitat cover is greater than 30% habitat patches will, on average, be larger and the distance between patches will typically be less, resulting in greater connectivity. This means that if local extinctions do occur, other populations of the same species can move into the area easily. 

Manx Wildlife Trust (www.mwt.im) is the leading nature conservation charity in the Isle of Man with over 1200 members plus supporting local businesses. It manages 34 nature reserves covering 2% of the Isle of Man and runs events and activities for schools, youth groups and families. Its work includes efforts to bring back breeding puffins to the Calf of Man and the creation of a flagship public engagement site at Hairpin Woodlan Park near Ramsey. You can follow Manx Wildlife Trust on Facebook at facebook.com/ManxWildlifeTrust, LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/company/manx-wildlife-trust or Instagram manxwt 

The Wildlife Trusts 
The Wildlife Trusts are making the world wilder and helping to ensure that nature is part of everyone’s lives. We are a grassroots movement of 46 charities with more than 911,000 members and 35,000 volunteers. No matter where you are in Britain, there is a Wildlife Trust inspiring people and saving, protecting, and standing up for the natural world. With the support of our members, we care for and restore special places for nature on land and run marine conservation projects and collect vital data on the state of our seas. Every Wildlife Trust works within its local community to inspire people to create a wilder future – from advising thousands of landowners on how to manage their land to benefit wildlife, to connecting hundreds of thousands of school children with nature every year. www.wildlifetrusts.org

230202 British Isles temperate rainforest zone

Map © Crown copyright and database right 2022. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Met Office; Hollis, D.; McCarthy, M.; Kendon, M.; Legg, T.; Simpson, I. (2021): HadUK-Grid Gridded Climate Observations on a 1km grid over the UK, v1.0.3.0 (1862-2020). NERC EDS Centre for Environmental Data Analysis, 08 September 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.5285/786b3ce6be54468496a3e11ce2f2669c. Temperate Rainforest Zones derived from methodology described by Ellis, Christopher. ‘Oceanic and Temperate Rainforest Climates and Their Epiphyte Indicators in Britain’. Ecological Indicators 70 (2016): 125–33. 

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