Over two million seeds have been collected by volunteers to boost Scotland’s native ancient woodlands and temperate rainforest to tackle climate breakdown and address the country’s native tree shortage.

The Trees for Life and Woodland Trust Scotland initiative looks to increase the country’s availability of rare tree seeds.

Glen Finglas Tree Seed Collection volunteers collecting Eared Willow credit Rosamonde Birch

A team of more than 80 volunteers has collected 2.2 million seeds since last August, in the first season of the three-year Tree Seed Collection Project – enabling 1.5 million trees to be grown for rewilding across Scotland.

The project focuses on rare tree species from Scotland’s surviving fragments of ancient woodland, including on Skye, the Western Isles and Orkney, and west coast temperate rainforest.

Roz Birch, the Tree Seed Collection Project’s volunteer coordinator, says: “This project is preserving genetically precious and rare species – in turn helping restore native ancient woodland and rainforest, and providing homes for wildlife from wood ants to pine martens.”

He goes on to say the initiative will aid Scotland’s rewilding campaign, helping to tackle climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.

Scotland is currently one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, a campaign for the country to become the world’s first Rewilding Nation – backed by Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio – was recently launched in a bid to commit 30% of land and sea to nature recovery.

The young trees grown from the seeds will be available for planting at sites across Scotland in the coming autumnal months – including Woodland Trust Scotland projects to restore Scotland’s rainforest, and Caledonian pinewoods at sites in Argyll and Bute, Lochaber, and the Trossachs.

The Trusts’ Croft Woodland and MOREwoods schemes – which help crofters, smallholders and common grazings associations manage and plant woodlands – will also benefit, as will a 30-year landscape-scale project to establish new native woodlands and restore remnant rainforest in Assynt.

Where natural regeneration is impossible due to a lack of seed sources following deforestation, tree planting is critical for Scotland’s threatened Caledonian forest, of which less than 2% remains.

Trees for Life volunteers have now planted more than two million trees at dozens of sites across the Highlands.
All volunteers receive training and equipment for collecting short-term storage of seeds, for details, email Roz Birch at roz@treesforlife.org.uk.