Scotland’s rainforest project wins £5.98 million (about $8 million)
The five-year award supports hubs in Torridon, Morvern and mid-Argyll, with restoration training and work opportunities for local people.
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The five-year award supports hubs in Torridon, Morvern and mid-Argyll, with restoration training and work opportunities for local people.
The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded £5.98 million (about $8 million) to Our Rainforest Futures, a five-year project to restore Scotland’s rainforest and give local people opportunities to work on its recovery.
Around 30,000 hectares of the rainforest remain. The wet west-coast woodlands support internationally important lichens, mosses and liverworts, but overgrazing by deer and livestock, invasive plants and disease threaten the surviving woodland.
The award supports hubs in Torridon, Morvern and mid-Argyll. Local people will have training and work opportunities in habitat restoration, deer management and the removal of invasive species, the BBC said.
Woodland Trust Scotland leads the Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest project. Partners include Argyll Countryside Trust, Community Woodlands Association, Plantlife, RSPB Scotland and Scotland’s Rural College, which will develop and deliver training for rainforest communities.
Julie Stoneman, Plantlife’s Saving Scotland’s Rainforest programme manager, said the project hopes to create more than 20 jobs and 15 trainee posts. She said it will offer accredited and informal training, including in ecological surveying, as well as grants and advice for community-led projects and opportunities to volunteer and learn.
The grant covers 72% of the project’s £8.3 million budget. NatureScot and players of Postcode Lottery also support it.
The reservoir reached its highest level since August 2019 on 7 November after heavy rain, while drought persisted in parts of the region.
The Heritage Fund also supported the development phase. During that phase, from July 2024 to October 2025, Community Woodlands Association consulted groups about training, funding and restoration ideas, and explored a community grant fund. A survey that closed on 31 March 2025 gathered rainforest-area community groups’ views on networking, training, community enterprise and funding. Another, which closed on 30 September 2025, gathered their restoration ideas for the delivery phase.
Calum Robertson joined a project volunteer trip to Torridon in 2025 while studying wildlife and conservation management at Scotland’s Rural College. He said the experience helped him gain skills and meet conservation workers; he later became a rainforest squad trainee at Argyll Countryside Trust, tackling invasive species, and progressed to a split role as rainforest operative and woodland coordinator, managing and delivering restoration projects. He said he believed volunteering with the project was key to his subsequent employment.
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