Wildlife of Britain

The Ice Age Migration History of British Forests The forests of Britain are not simply a collection of native species.  They are the outcome of a dramatic ecological migration story spanning tens of thousands of years—one shaped by ice sheets, land bridges, rapid climate shifts, and repeated near-extinctions.  To understand why Britain’s native trees exist in their current form, you have to start not in a forest, but in a landscape of ice and tundra. During the last Ice Age, most of Britain was unrecognisable. Forests did not dominate the landscape; they were almost entirely absent from large areas.  What exists today as woodland is the result of one of the fastest large-scale recolonisation events in European natural history. Britain under ice: a tree-less world During the Last Glacial Maximum (around 26,000–19,000 years ago), much of northern Britain was covered by ice sheets.  Even areas not glaciated directly were: • periglacial tundra • exposed, frozen soils • s...