Between the Ears: Secrets of the Scottish Rainforest

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Secrets of the Scottish Rainforest

BBC Radio 3 - Between the Ears, Secrets of the Scottish Rainforest

Poet Kathleen Jamie explores a temperate rainforest on the west coast of Scotland.

Scotland's national poet Kathleen Jamie explores a temperate rainforest on the Atlantic coast and presents a new work, The Green Room, inspired by this ancient and rare ecosystem.

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

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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