The key challenges and opportunities facing some of the world’s rarest woodland areas have been highlighted at the first national conference dedicated to temperate rainforests.

Held at the University of Plymouth, the conference featured talks and group discussions by researchers and practitioners based all over the world.

It included a keynote address by Dr Dominick DellaSala, Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, a project of Earth Island Institute, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology’s North America Section, who spoke about the work which inspired his award-winning book Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World.

Delegates were also given the first look at a model, designed by researchers at the University and soon to be launched by the South West Rainforest Alliance, which aims to identify areas with the greatest potential for rainforest restoration and opportunities to buffer and connect these precious and isolated habitats through targeted rainforest expansion.

Temperate rainforests are typically found in coastal and upland regions, and despite being found all over the world, they make up just 2% of the Earth’s surface. In Britain and Ireland, they are often characterised by the gnarled, wind-battered limbs of oak, hazel and rowan trees, and can be found in western Scotland, north-west England, Wales, and south-west England.

Among the topics discussed during the conference was the threat climate change could pose to the future scale and health of these wooded areas but, conversely, the important role they could play in helping to address it.

Delegates also debated some of the particular challenges facing the South West’s temperate rainforests, including their remoteness and isolation and the difficulties this posed for their expansion and conservation.

And they highlighted the need for more research on this habitat given its importance and implications for global biodiversity, carbon and water-cycling.