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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department plans to include temperate rainforest restoration in its Landscape Recovery pilot projects.

Landscape Recovery will provide funding for long-term, large-scale projects to enhance habitats and deliver land-use change with a focus on biodiversity, water quality and net zero. This could include projects that plan to restore woodland or temperate rainforest.

Applications for the first round of Landscape Recovery pilots closed on 24 May. We are currently assessing the 51 bids received and will confirm which projects have been selected later this summer.

We intend to launch a second round of pilot projects next year and will confirm the proposed focus for that round later this year.