Island's habitat to be restored

HUNDREDS of acres of rainforest are to be restored on the Isle of Man, in the largest project so far of a £38 million scheme to revive the rare habitat.

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Manx Wildlife Trust will restore 750 acres of temperate rainforest at Glen Auldyn, a 1,100-acre landscape that also includes peat, protected heathland, wetlands and species-rich grasslands which will not be planted on, along with areas used by red-listed birds including curlew.

The multimillion-pound project is the largest to enter the Wildlife Trust's rainforest recovery programme, backed by £38 million from insurance giant Aviva, to restore a vanishing habitat and make it resilient to climate change, and will form the largest nature reserve on the Isle of Man.

Wildlife experts describe temperate rainforest, a globally rare habitat that once swathed western coasts of England, Wales, Scotland, the island of Ireland and the Isle of Man, as the “jewel in the crown” of the country’s landscapes, but warn they are a pale shadow of their former selves.

The area of Britain covered by these woodlands has shrunk from a fifth to just 1%, cleared for timber, commercial forestry and agriculture.