Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy for temperate rainforest initiatives to become eligible to participate in the Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery schemes from 2024.

Recognising the success of Countryside Stewardship, we have decided to evolve the scheme instead of developing a new ‘Local Nature Recovery’ scheme. Both Countryside Stewardship and the new Landscape Recovery scheme support temperate rainforest.

There are five woodland options in Countryside Stewardship, including a woodland improvement option (WD2) which is designed to help restore plantations on ancient woodland sites, enhance priority habitats, enhance priority species and improve resilience to climate change through continuous cover forestry. We plan to open a new round of applications for woodland management in early 2024. We will continue to develop this offer as we evolve Countryside Stewardship.

Landscape Recovery round two opened on 18 May and will focus on net zero, protected sites and habitat creation. Landscape scale projects which will create and enhance temperate rainforest are eligible to apply.