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A review by andrewspink
The Lost Rainforests of Britain by Guy Shrubsole
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
4.5
In some ways, this was quite a nostalgic book for me. I remember taking the biology students from Glasgow University to the hanging valley of Glencoe and getting excited about finding the filmy ferns there. The horror of the students in their city shoes who were not used to being out of an urban environment discovering just how wet everything was in that rainforest (not that we called it that back then) was also pretty memorable. Going further back in time to 1982, when I was a first year botany student myself, we visited Yarncliffe Wood (in the Peak District just outside Sheffield) where our lecturers were rightly proud of the 30-year experiment which had just been published. I still remember the dramatic difference between the thickly vegetated plots with a fence around and the plots with only older trees and no fence. It was drummed into us that this proved that you normally don't need to plant trees, just create the right conditions for natural regeneration. Apparently this is a lesson which still needs teaching. I also remember crawling through some amazing Devon and Cornwall rainforests searching for Ranunculus omiophyllus up in the headwaters of the streams running through them.
So, it was an enjoyable experience to read the book. It was clearly very well-researched and also very nice that it gave attention to so-called lower plants as well as the trees and other 'higher' plants in woodlands, though a little more on the mosses would have been welcome.
It is not a dry academic volume, Guy Shrubsole communicates his enthusiasm effectively. It reads easily and In parts, it was quite thought-provoking as well. I was struck by his comment that bringing back Britain's rainforests can be seen as a decolonial project. We have no problem pointing the finger at countries like Brazil and India and saying that they should preserve and restore their forests, including the top-level carnivores, so why should we not do the same here as well? If they have to find a way of living alongside tigers, why should we not find a way of living alongside wolves?
So, it was an enjoyable experience to read the book. It was clearly very well-researched and also very nice that it gave attention to so-called lower plants as well as the trees and other 'higher' plants in woodlands, though a little more on the mosses would have been welcome.
It is not a dry academic volume, Guy Shrubsole communicates his enthusiasm effectively. It reads easily and In parts, it was quite thought-provoking as well. I was struck by his comment that bringing back Britain's rainforests can be seen as a decolonial project. We have no problem pointing the finger at countries like Brazil and India and saying that they should preserve and restore their forests, including the top-level carnivores, so why should we not do the same here as well? If they have to find a way of living alongside tigers, why should we not find a way of living alongside wolves?