Secrets of the Scottish Rainforest

Available for over a year

Join Scottish makar - or national poet - Kathleen Jamie as she explores a temperate rainforest on the Atlantic coastline near the Sound of Mull. Out of this experience, Kathleen has written The Green Room - a sequence of poems which tell the story of these ancient woodlands from the perspective of the water, lichens, mosses, oaks and hazelwoods that make up this unique and rare ecosystem, also known as Celtic rainforest or Atlantic Woodland. Scotland's west-coast rainforest zone is hyper-oceanic and includes 125 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs). But today only around 30,000 hectares of rainforest remain, and it faces many threats including overgrazing, pollution, human development and invasive rhododendron. However, there are plans to restore and regenerate it through large-scale projects. In this wet and wild corner of the Highlands, Kathleen is accompanied by crofter and ecologist Alasdair Firth from The Woodland Trust and local RSPB warden Izzy Baker. Includes music by Scottish composer Erland Cooper and Alice Boyd's EP ‘From The Understory’, created as part of her artist residency at the Eden Project - the world’s largest indoor rainforest. Produced by Victoria Ferran Exec producer Susan Marling A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 3