The ambitious 100-year restoration programme is being led by local nature conservation charity Ulster Wildlife, thanks to a long-term partnership with Aviva.
Temperate rainforest, also known as Atlantic Oakwoods or Celtic Rainforest, once thrived across Ireland and western Britain, in areas of high rainfall and high humidity. However, centuries of deforestation have reduced it to less than 1% of its former range, making it rarer and more threatened than tropical rainforest.
Almost 30,000 native trees of Irish provenance, such as oak, alder and rowan, have been planted on the 41-acre site. This will boost the tiny, rare fragment of ancient woodland that still survives here, home to red squirrels and carpets of bluebells, helping it to develop into a more connected and resilient rainforest.
In addition, hundreds of sessile oak acorns from ancient woodland, near Gortin, were collected under licence from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). The young trees will be planted at Lenamore Wood next year, helping preserve the local genetic heritage of the woodland.
As the woodland at Lenamore matures, it will play a vital role in helping to bring back the long-lost temperate rainforest habitat and the specialist species which depend upon it for survival, such as Irish stoats, threatened birds such as wood warbler, and a host of mosses, ferns and fungi.
Members of the public had the opportunity to experience the new nature reserve first-hand at a recent open day, where they walked among the newly planted trees and planted a tree of their own – leaving a lasting mark on the nature reserve’s future.
