Shrubsole’s book could be a lament but instead it is suffused with the irrepressible positivity and cheerful enthusiasm of a born campaigner. Even protected sites are damaged: according to Natural England, Johnny Wood, which Shrubsole visited in the Lake District, is in “unfavourable – declining” condition because of “widespread evidence of deer browsing, and continued encroachment by sheep” preventing the wood’s regeneration. Of Britain’s fragmentary rainforest, astonishingly Shrubsole reveals that just 27% is designated a special site of scientific interest, meaning the vast majority is unprotected. And yet, as Shrubsole has calculated, our native rainforest has been destroyed and erased from memory: today there are just 18,870 hectares (46,629 acres) in England.Ĭeunant Llennyrch national nature reserve in Wales, where rare rainforest mosses grow. It was not until 2016 that an ecologist, Dr Chris Ellis, calculated that 20% of Britain lay within the temperate rainforest zone, possessing ideal “bioclimatic conditions”. “It’s the definition of a British summer holiday really,” says Shrubsole wryly. Temperate rainforest is cool but not cold, with July temperatures averaging 16C or less. According to ecologists, “rainforest” is land receiving more than 1,400mm of rain each year with rain spread across the summer as well as winter. “Lost” rainforest is a romantic idea but Britain’s Atlantic temperate rainforest is a formal, scientifically recognised habitat – and globally scarcer than tropical rainforest. We can debate how extensive it was – whether it was wood pasture or closed canopy rainforest – but there’s no doubt we had many more trees than we do now.”

It lurks in our imagination – this idea of a great wood that spread over Britain. The positive response “is partly to do with the reawakening of people’s interest in nature we’ve seen over the last couple of years from lockdown walks to rebel botanists chalking the scientific names of weeds on pavements,” says Shrubsole, “but it also speaks to that deep-seated environmentalism that exists in Britain – a sense that we’ve lost something from our green and pleasant land.

A Guardian story about his rainforest fascination received more than 200,000 views, and yet more information from the public, and his book was born. When Shrubsole established a blog, asking people to help record overlooked fragments of rainforest – often only existing as treeless “shadow woods” in the phrase of the ecologist Ian Rotherham – he was amazed by the response. ‘I definitely want to convey the extreme importance of treating these places with utmost respect,’ says Shrubsole.

Shrubsole who owns england