Thousand Year Trust

Our Oaken Bones is out in the world 🌿 An honest and intimate true story of renewal, the astonishing healing power of nature — and our duty to heal it in return. @merlinhanburytenison has been travelling across the UK, sharing the journey behind his book and the beautiful temperate rainforest that shaped it. “I lie on the rock to let my limbs dry after my immersion in the river… I am home.” We invite you into our world by experiencing Our Oaken Bones yourself; find it online or in your nearest bookshop and share the story with us.

We’re excited to launch our crowdfunding campaign to build the UK’s first ever Rainforest Research Station – and we need your help to make it a reality! Thanks to the incredible support of Aviva, all donations up to £250 will be MATCHED – meaning your gift will go twice as far! Our goal? To raise £110,000 to create a hub for research, conservation, and community engagement that will protect the UK’s rare temperate rainforest for generations to come. Join us in making a lasting difference. Together, we can better understand, protect and expand this precious ecosystem by building a space where people and nature thrive. Donate today and be part of something special! #CornwallRainforest #ThousandYearTrust #AvivaMatches #Crowdfunding #DoubleYourImpact #RainforestResearch #MakeADifference #Conservation #ProtectNature

More mobility. More action. More impact. ​ ​ We are proud to announce the six winners of the Defender Awards 2025. A programme dedicated to celebrating those protecting people, wildlife and the planet.​ Our six winners are: Thousand Year Trust, UK. Next Commons Lab, Japan. PolluSub, France. Skin Check Champions, Australia. Salviamo l’Orso, Italy. The Litterboom Project, South Africa. ​ To learn more about our winners, visit our YouTube channel.​ ​ #Defender #DefenderAwards​

For the @allblacks , training outside is a big part of their lives. But how often do they stop and think about the impact being in nature can have on their mental and physical health?     Four teammates spent time in nature with conservationist and mental health advocate @merlinhanburytennison , where they explored the vital relationship between our health and the health of our planet.  Watch the full film by following the link in our bio.   Bupa is the official healthcare partner of the All Blacks and Black Ferns.

This forest is a 4,000-year-old living entity. It’s a giant mushroom with thousands of fingers pointing in the air. Our purpose is to make sure that with each human generation it is slightly bigger, more biodiverse and more harmonious.

You need 500 years to watch trees evolve and grow. But with luck, our children will see this beautiful temperate rainforest in 80 years’ time, when today’s vision is fruiting and burgeoning, and a rainforest nation is more enthusiastic than ever about its regrowing forests.

Through Winter, the mossy canopy thrives, reminding us how temperate rainforests truly are nature’s wonderland 🌳

Amidst all the groundbreaking research we conduct here at TYT, it’s easy to overlook the very beauty of the habitats we are trying to protect, restore and expand ✨ But these habitats also protect, restore and expand us as humans. A place of true enchantment, we are lucky to live and walk amongst the giants of the forest, and its small leafy companions.

How can we think like an oak tree? Sessile oak trees can take 300 years to grow. They live and thrive for over 400 years, and can take 300 years to slowly die, rot and return their goodness to the soil. We believe that if we are truly to heal our natural habitats, we need to think like an oak – over a thousand-year timespan - making decisions not just for our generation, but for the future ⏰

Here are just a few of the faces behind the Thousand Year Trust, all working in close collaboration to drive forward the charity’s mission. We’ve got big ambitions and we’re just getting started. Join the movement by donating, following our journey or collaborating with us. ⚡️

British temperate rainforests are home to a diverse tapestry of plant, fungi and animal species 🍄

When I look back at where I started with Lost Forests, I was hugely inspired by conservationist @merlinhanburytenison ’s woodland in the Cabilla Valley on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.  It includes one of the fragments of temperate rainforests we have left in Britain and I’d never been in a forest like it before. It was there I learnt about epiphytes and polypody ferns, the 3,500 year old mycelium that runs under the woodland floor and how a single oak tree can have over 600 species living in it at any one time. Merlin’s focus now is the @thousandyeartrust , the only charity in the UK dedicated to the restoration of our ancient Atlantic rainforests. Its name is inspired by the great Sessile oak, which can take 300 years to grow, live and thrive for another 400 then take 300 years to slowly die, rot and return their goodness to the soil. To heal our natural habitats he argues we need to think with the same thousand year time-span. The Thousand Year Trust is currently on a mission to launch Europe’s first temperate rainforest research station, a place to catalyse innovation that can help restore these precious landscapes for millenia to come. I was back there in Cornwall recently working on my next project, which will continue to highlight these forests that remain and need our protection – something that Merlin lives and breathes.