Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

Fantastic article by @guyshrubsole about restoring the UK's most neglected, forgotten and depleted habitat: rainforest.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

When I first started writing about the UK's rainforests, the overwhelming response was disbelief. Because we have lost all but a few tiny fragments, and because of our deeply weird conservation priorities, this rich and wonderful habitat had been almost completely forgotten.

But I've never seen social attitudes change faster than our approach to ecology in the UK. In just a few years, we have started to shed our strange obsession with degraded habitats, to understand ecological history and to embrace #rewilding. It's an astonishing turnaround.

Rainforest would naturally be the dominant ecosystem in the western uplands. Overwhelmingly it's missing due to grazing: tree seedlings are highly nutritious, so sheep selectively browse them out. Old forests die in their boots. New ones can't establish.
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

In many places, especially in Wales, where livestock are supposed to be excluded, the woods are swarming with sheep. Commonly, the entire understorey has been eliminated. As the old trees die, there's nothing to replace them.

What makes this infuriating is that farmers receive public money on the grounds that livestock are kept out of the woods. But when they blatantly break the rules - as I see again and again - they still get the money. Monitoring and enforcement are a dead letter.

A friend of mine was a woodlands officer in Wales. He took his job seriously. When he reported breaches, his bosses simply refused to act. He later discovered they were friends with the farmers who were breaking the rules. It was one big cosy club.
(Reminds me of something🤔)