100 volunteers collected 11m seeds to restore Scotland's disappearing rainforest

In one of Scotland's largest citizen-led woodland restoration efforts, around 100 volunteers have spent the past three years hand-collecting more than 11 million rare native tree seeds from remote forests, islands and rugged coastlines. The ambitious project, led by Trees for Life and Woodland Trust Scotland, has already exceeded its original target elevenfold and is expected to produce nearly 7.8 million native trees for rewilding projects across the country. By gathering genetically unique seeds from some of Scotland's oldest woodlands and fragments of its endangered Atlantic rainforest, volunteers are helping restore habitats that have been shaped over thousands of years and are now among Europe's rarest ecosystems.How volunteers collected 11 million rare seeds from Scotland's remotest forestsLaunched in August 2023, the Tree Seed Collection Project initially aimed to collect one million native tree seeds over three years.