Project launched to triple area of UK’s temperate rainforest

Temperate rainforests offer a unique and biodiverse habitat

(Image credit: Steve Taylor ARPS/Alamy Stock Photo)

published 11 May 2023

A veteran of the war in Afghanistan who owns one of the remaining tracts of temperate rainforest in Britain has set up a charity to support the unique and biodiverse habitat. The Thousand Year Trust will work with landowners, farmers and charities to triple the area of temperate rainforest growing across the UK from the 330,000 acres believed currently to exist, to a million acres over the next 30 years. The charity was established by Merlin Hanbury-Tenison, who is rewilding his 300-acre family farm on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, and aiming to restore its ancient woodland.

WHO: Covid no longer a ‘global health emergency’

The World Health Organisation has declared that Covid-19 is no longer a “global health emergency”. The UN body, which classed the outbreak as a “pandemic” in March 2020, said its decision had been made in light of the decreasing trend in Covid deaths and in Covid-related hospital admissions. The WHO’s director-general said these shifts gave cause for hope, but warned that “the worst thing any country could do now is to use this news as a reason to let down its guard”.

Scheme sees children double literary scores

A pilot scheme in which university students tutored children who were struggling to write basic sentences has led to a doubling in their literacy scores. Set up by academics at Exeter University, the project involved undergraduates (who had been given a week’s training) being assigned three pupils who were in year 8 (aged 12 and 13) at local secondary schools. Each week, they gave the children an hour-long lesson. After just one term, the children’s literary scores had doubled from an average of 10.9 out of 30 to 21 out of 30.