Britain s Tiny Rainforest Has A Big Problem.

So I've just come back to see one of the remaining fragments of Britain's temperate rainforest and you know I'm not happy with what I've seen today but equally well I have had some fun here today as well so let's get into it. So I'm on my way back to go see Blackjaw Copse it's an upland oak rainforest it's a lot of three here on Dartmoor and yeah this is a place I've been to once and I'm going back it's always like going back to see an old friend. I'm always interested to see what I can find in habitats like this because they are amazing but I'm also interested to see you know I'm trying to understand the health of it like are sheep getting in and grazing and eating everything and is it beginning to expand and get bigger? As you can see these guys are extremely thorough at eating so if you come to see Blackjaw Copse you've got the park at Melbourne Reservoir which is just over there it's a pretty nice route pretty nice friendly walk in but look you can see that there is a load of rhododendron ponticum over there and while this time of year it does look quite stunning with those pink flowers it is really invasive it can you know move I think the flowers produce over a million seeds a year it also bursts up from the roots it's a very prolific species and it's also quite poisonous too still it was brought across here because the Victorians thought it looked good. These old hawthorns might just be some of my favorite trees in these landscapes it's typically only a tree which you see in like hedgerows but you know when they are allowed to they can turn into these beautiful little little trees there he is right there that is a little rowan tree coming up oh this gauze that gauze is spiky but it's giving this it's giving this rowan tree some protection here to to get away from from the sheep and uh rowans are of course the Leave Curious logo one of my favorite trees. Cheeky little camp don't mind it. Good morning. There's a bird's nest there made out of all the moss and everything where we're heading now to this rainforest the birds are absolutely spoilt for choice in how they can build and decorate their nests I also think there might be a couple of natural pools on a day like today you know I'm fairly partial to a little dip. So this ferny looking plant which you see here this is this is known as bracken and there's a couple of theories around bracken it's a native species here in the UK but it also gets called a native invasive because it does move in and I feel like bracken is a little bit misunderstood for me when bracken is moving in and it's taking over I think it's just a sign that there needs to be like a decent stable sustainable level of grazing some people also say that it's a sign where woodland used to be or potentially could be I think that's true as well and bracken also acts as a great nursery for young trees to come up through so I don't think bracken is all that bad to be honest with you so there's the forest but then up there you've got the the tour I'm actually going against the grain a bit here because you can do a nice circular clockwise walk from the car park which takes you up past the tour and then you finish at the rainforest and then you come back down but no offence I haven't got much interest in a pile of rocks yes I know the tours are important for Dartmoor but I want to go see the trees no no no no no what somebody had here then chili garlic olives that was you who's enjoying some chili garlic olives you should have taken this with you now it's coming with me that tree has an almighty bulge this little oak tree here has a disproportionately sized bulge and I forget what that's called I think it's an association to some kind of internal problem that's going on with the tree this is an old wound trees basically heal over and occlude their wounds you can see the bulge has been a really nice rubbing post for sheep I can't say I'm surprised that there is sheep grazing right near the forest and the last time we came there was absolutely no fence or exclusion exclusion zone around black tool cops and I doubt there'll be one now there you go there's some sheep grazing in the forest yeah you know I'm talking about you what I didn't realize at the time was that there were sheep throughout this entire section of the forest and as I kept walking I kept finding more and more of them beneath the canopy unfortunately the audio from this part of the walk was corrupt but the point I was making was fairly simple at a glance it might seem like I'm overreacting to a few sheep having a bite to eat in the shade and to be fair who can blame them outside of black tool cops there is very little shelter on these exposed moors especially on a hot summer's day and why is there so little tree cover here in the first place the answer lies in centuries of extensive grazing livestock are largely free to roam these landscapes with few barriers and no natural predators to influence where they spend their time over generations that constant browsing prevents young trees from surviving long enough to replace the old ones and so what looks like a few sheep quietly feeding in a patch of woodland is actually part of a much bigger story a story that has played out across britain's uplands for hundreds of years because sheep don't just eat young trees they also feed on wildflower shrubs and many of the other plants that make up a healthy woodland understory the result is a forest that can survive but struggles to regenerate a forest where the next generation of trees is missing and where much of the rich ground level vegetation has already disappeared this is a clear sign that so if you see this tree here just within the sheep's reach you can see there's no leaves on this tree but of course there is higher up the rules are with habitats like this do not walk through them you're not trample on the boulders the lichens and the mosses stick to the outside you know that's the rules for people who are visiting them so why are we allowing sheep just to ramp through and trample and eat everything we've let these habitats decline to around just one percent of their original range this is a habitat which could come back to around you know one fifth of britain you know let's be ambitious let's imagine a better landscape and look let's be honest protecting a rainforest and helping it expand it's not rocket science you just have to put a fence up or you just have to get the sheep out it really is really is that simple sometimes the simple things aren't easily done though so one of the reasons why we love rainforest temperate rainforest is because of the epiphytic growth so this is all of the species which which grow upon trees and look we've got a lichen here which is just growing and they are just magical it just blankets everything in this beautiful green tapestry you really want to be careful coming out in this sun you want to find yourself a wet little hole gonna be a tasty snack for a bird i think so i've decided i'm gonna walk around the entire edge of blacktore copse and just you know see what see what birds i can see see what creatures i can see see if i can see any more sheep so you can see here's the edge of the forest and there's a couple of young oaks there or not young fairly established oaks actually which are getting away and there's all of these boulders which i think just sort of give it cover and you know really stops the sheep you know sheep don't want to i mean they can walk through this but they'd rather not when they can just walk through the banquet which is the forest itself let me know if you're enjoying this kind of more like laid-back approach to making a video this isn't scripted i just knew i was coming to a cool habitat and hey you know like i think sometimes with the content i can get pretty caught up with you know making sure each video is like this wow it's not a masterpiece is it we don't make masterpieces here at leave curious but um i think in many ways i'm kind of crying out for this relaxed but still very authentic way of creating videos so let me know if you're enjoying it i'm just taking a minute to stop and have a look around to see if there's any baby oaks there is not many baby oaks i think this might be blayberry which is trying to come up here blayberry is a native and you know it really should be more abundant they produce these lovely little blueberry type berries tasty tasty of course for the sheep okay so here's the first young oak now i say young it might look young because it's been stunted but you can see that this has just been browsed so it's doing its best to come up but this has just been nibbled so much by the cheap sheep look you can see all this historic nibbling of it and this has died well look here's a great example of just how these oaks are struggling to get away i mean this must be ink like like an old oak but look it can't get any more than 30 centimeters off the ground because it's just been nibbled every single month of its life look here's another one just experiencing the exact same thing okay interesting we've got some planting going on here so there is some restoration work trying to take place you've got various cages just here just trying to plug this gap in the forest here yeah i mean look it's it's absolutely working these these oak trees are being able to establish and come up oh ouch get off my shoe it's got these like spikes in it i have to cut my leg on that ouch it's a little bit sore i didn't quite see but it's got these outward facing spikes i guess to keep keep the sheep out keeps the robbers out as well it's entirely my own fault but yeah it's absolutely great to see it is linking up this patch here but again it just makes me think why are we putting cages around the trees and not the entire forest you know it just feels like fences in general you know they are a band-aid over the underlying issue which is just animals being allowed to graze and go wherever they want did look a little bit rusty that cage i'm not sure how happy i am about about that cutting my leg but uh i'll give it a good clean when i get back the other thing is ticks i'm bowling it around in these shorts and you never know something could be something could be going up for a little nibble but wow we look at them going here see a little bit of protection and up they come i think it just leads to the question of why you know why aren't we protecting black tool cops why aren't we protecting all of our other rainforest fragments i mean somebody is responsible for these habitats and you know it's it's also not a mystery that they are important wow that's a really cool oak tree there sorry i get so distracted this is a really cool gnarly one that's just sort of coming out of the of the rock face there and look at the growth on that magical stuff more sheep it's pretty tough going to rain but it's a fun adventure nonetheless yeah i guess i was saying like it's absolutely no mystery that we need to be protecting these rainforests now so i just don't know why we're not doing it now guys i know it's hot so if you do go in the woods just go in for some shade and uh try not to eat any young trees please you know what that thing can smell it from here it does not smell good i mean these animals they can't be healthy i mean this is the truth of it in order to allow these animals to stay out on the hill with absolutely no interaction they have to be dunked into you know pesticides insecticides all these chemicals and it's just and then kind of underpinning all of it is the simple fact that sheep farming is on the decline it doesn't make much money and it's heavily subsidized has been heavily subsidized so i think it's time to say goodbye to the sheep or at least do it in a much more sentimental and smaller compartmentalized way so there's the edge of the forest to kind of walk the extent of it i'm going to head down there and head back through along the slightly easier pathway i mean there's a couple of little fragmented dots of trees there and you know it's a real shame it doesn't continue off into the distance a little leg update that's not looking too bad i remember from last time that there was a slightly boggy bit here i think i found it luckily it's not my bad leg going in there ready come on oh oh yes here we go why not there we go that one too a little bit but let's let's give this one a good old dunk good isn't it so here we have another beautiful boggy bit and i think that this is all sphagnum moss yeah look at that oh man that feels good pretty sure if you put your foot in that you would just disappear entirely sorry for disturbing you off to munch some more you look hot bud and back to doing what sheep do best willow just coming up in the middle of the river there just a couple hundred thousand more and we'll have ourselves a habitat beavers i'm yet to really explore like a astounding temperate rainforest but there's also beavers i think that would absolutely break the leave curious algorithm mixing beavers and rainforest blow my mind that's for sure now you can see here on the limb of this oak this is the impact which people have you know inadvertently over the years people have been crossing here and it's completely rubbed off all of the moss which would grow on here and again same with this branch here people was kind of using it to swing underneath you know i think in that case it's okay because it's on the path but this is just why we have to be mindful that we're not actually going through the forest itself so just as i was leaving blackfield cops i just saw this family they sat down and they had this little tiny baby just laying on the ground looking up at the canopy above and i just thought it was just really beautiful and really special i mean how many how many babies get to go and experience the temperate rainforest you know not enough not enough managed to scramble down into a nice little section here if you've got this far in the video and you haven't yet subscribed to leave curious and i do encourage you to do so the very best way of supporting the channel is by becoming a member that's linked on the screen here and here's a video for you to keep watching do let me know if you've enjoyed this one it's been an it's been fun to make it's been a breath of fresh air for me in the meantime thank you so much for watching leave curious