Kintyre Rainforest Alliance
Argyll and Bute Council · 28 August 2024
Back to Mid Argyll, Kintyre and the Islands Area Community Planning Group — 28 August 2024 and its agenda
Text extracted from the council's PDF. Layout and reading order may differ from the original.
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PRESENTATION TO MAKI CPG 28TH AUGUST 2024 KINTYRE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE Sarah Moorcroft Jenn Lee kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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Ancient Oak Tree Clonaig Woods THE AIM OF TODAY’S PRESENTATION To highlight that Kintyre’s Rainforest is internationally important, part of Scotland’s rainforest, the biggest remnant rainforest left in the UK. To enlist this groups support to actively engage with, support and promote the work of Kintyre Rainforest Alliance. kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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KINTYRE’S TEMPERATE RAINFORESTS ARE IMPORTANT IN SO MANY WAYS IMPACTING • Climate Change • Biodiversity • Job Creation • Health and Wellbeing • Education and Scotlands heritage and cultural connections kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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CLIMATE CHANGE Temperate Rainforests, with their lichen, bryophytes and ferns are a carbon sink on a carbon sink. They also create their own micro climates, moderating temperatures and rainfall. There is nothing we can do that is more proactive in dealing with climate change than protecting and expanding our rainforests. Clonaig Woods SSSIkintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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BIODIVERSITY “I can’t wait to return to Kintyre so that I can generate even more records of INTERNATIONALLY important rainforest biodiversity! There is plenty more to discover…” Oliver Moore - Lichen and Bryophyte Expert with Plantlife Scotland Pseudocyphellaria norvegica (Norwegian Specklebelly) kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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JOB CREATION • Ecologists • Foresters • Deer Larder Staff • Tourism • Access management • Education • Project Managers • Art and craft jobs • Retail • Farm and croft diversification Community and Experts coming together to explore the biodiversity of Torrisdale SSSI 6kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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HEALTH AND WELLBEING • Mental health benefits • Physical Health benefits An unmapped woodland in East Kintyre kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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EDUCATION, CULTURE, HERITAGE AND TOURISM • Heritage Centre, Carradale kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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KINTYRE RAINFOREST ALLIANCE • Mapping • Recording • Putting Kintyre on the map nationally! • Engaging with communities, MSP’s, council staff, The Alliance for Scotlands Rainforest, ACT, The woodland Trust, The native woodlands cooperative, Plantlife Scotland, other rainforest community groups, Community councils, SKDT, CCT, enagging with land owners, and people who are not landowners, speaking to schools, writing grant applications, creating newsletters, running social media feeds, learning, and learning more about Rainforests so that we can share our passion for them. • What for? The Scottish Governments strategic approach to restoring and expanding Scotlands rainforest kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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WHAT ARE WE DOING THIS FOR? • Because our rainforest are under threat, they will disappear within the next few generations if we fail to take action now. • Because a legacy that we can all be engaged with is to leave healthy diverse woodlands, flourishing, with their rare and special lichen, bryophytes, plants and animals safe for future generations to be mesmerised by them too. • And because rainforests bring people together in surprising ways, arguments are forgotten, politics don’t matter, history becomes irrelevant, when you fall in love with the rainforests and decide to act you have something to shout about together. kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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WHAT DO WE NEED TO DO? • We need to map our rainforest fragments and document the amazing wealth of species with in them. • We need to expand and connect rainforest fragments to make them more resilient. • At a landscape scale we need to remove Rhododendron ponticum. It is shading out our native trees, and creating sterile forest floors where nothing else can grow, no bluebells, no mosses, no filmy ferns. • We need to control herbivores in the rainforest, that means controlling deer numbers. Deer are a much loved and essential part of a flourishing rainforest, but in high and artificial numbers they browse all the new shoots preventing regeneration. We very much want deer, just not so many of them, and we want them to be healthy. kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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A LANDSCAPE SCALE PROJECT THE EAST KINTYRE BIOSPHERE • Imagine a Biosphere, a zone where the complex fragments of a whole landscape are reassembled. Restoring a Nature network across our land and sea habitats, reconnecting nature, from cotton grass to Sea Eagle, from Newt to Orchid, from Otter to Emerald Moth. • The East Kintyre Biosphere journeys from peatland, through the rainforest, on again through species rich grassland and coastal habitats, and reaches the sea. All zones recognised as of significant ecological importance. • The core of the biosphere is a temperate rainforest remnant Torrisdale Cliffs SSSI, where globally important lichen, bryophytes and ferns can be found. • This is where restoring Kintyre’s Rainforests begins. The journey starts now. kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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WHAT DO WE NEED YOU TO DO? • Give your support to Kintyre Rainforest Alliance and help us to engage meaningfully with local communities across Kintyre, your advice and support will be invaluable. • Commit to support saving Kintyre Rainforests, talk about them, share what they are with your communities, make sure that they are in LDPs, and biodiversity action plans, consider if as statutory bodies you have them on your estate? • Add your voices to the national call to ensure that funding it available for restoring the rainforests. In the areas where landscape scale projects are already underway, the benefits to the community have been massive, and people have come together, with new jobs created and volunteering to restore the forest and bringing quality land based jobs back home. • Make sure that when planning decisions are being made across Kintyre that consideration is given to the impact on these fragile ecosystems. The blocking or diversion of a stream or increase in sediment entering the waterway at the top of a hill, can destroy an entire ecosystem in a gully filled with rainforest rarities miles away downstream. • Support us in engaging with the council to remove INNS along roadsides and council owned land where we have a landscape scale project taking place. • Speak to us, we definitely don’t know all of the answers, but we have an amazing network of people who do and an active nature loving community behind us. kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com Questions?
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LINKS Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforests https://savingscotlandsrainforest.org.uk ACT - Argyll and the Isles Coast and Countryside Trust https://www.act-now.org.uk The Woodland Trust - Saving Scotland’s rainforest https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/about-us/where-we-work/scotland/saving-scotlands-rainforest/ The Scottish Governments strategic approach to restoring and expanding Scotland’s rainforest https://www.forestry.gov.scot/publications/1586-the-scottish-government-s-strategic-approach-to- restoring-and-expanding-scotland-s-rainforest/viewdocument/1586 The State of Nature Report 2023 https://stateofnature.org.uk/countries/scotland/ Kintyre Rainforest Alliance Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61556679622357 Email Sarah and Jenn at : kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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https://stateofnature.org.uk/countries/scotland/ kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com
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SCOTLAND’S RAINFOREST ZONE kintyrerainforestalliance@yahoo.com