IF YOU want a way of escape from the insane and vicious world so assiduously being promoted by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, and by the malevolent influences within Iran, the mossy, dripping, lichens-rich rainforests of west and mid Wales beckon.

To stand in silence in one of these places of solitude and rare habitat is to repulse, if only temporarily, the hammering of invasive madness and to instead take in the thrumming of nature left to its own devices.

This is to enter a world in which death and destruction, terror and misery, are not the backdrop. To escape, for a while, the spectacle of ordinary people, by the thousands, whether in Gaza, Iran or Beirut, or wherever, having their ordinary and blameless lives ripped apart - perhaps for the umpteenth time - by forces over which they have not the slightest control, and for their suffering to then, outrageously, be labelled ‘collateral damage’.

No apology is necessary for an escape to the woods. There is no gain in everyone being full-time desolated by the craziness and criminality that has seen parts of Tehran reduced to rubble and, according to recent Red Crescent figures, 555 killed, including scores of children at a girls’ school in southern Iran hit on 28 February, the first day of US and Israeli attacks on the country.

People protest, mourn, and campaign, and sometimes they recharge.

It’s cheering to know, therefore, that The Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales has begun planting 50,000 broadleaved trees on 146 acres at Trellwyn Fach in north Pembrokeshire

to restore lost Atlantic rainforest - as part of a wider project aimed at restoring and reconnecting remaining fragments of temperate rainforest across the British Isles. Insurers Aviva are ploughing £38m into the entire scheme.

Eryri; Cwm Einion, in Ceredigion; Cwm Doethie-Mynydd Mallaen special area of conservation in Powys and the Elan Valley will benefit. In those places, rainforests have deteriorated because of nature-deadening conifer-plantations and too much or too little grazing by sheep and deer.

Lichens, and birds including pied flycatcher, redstart and wood-warbler, and the lesser horseshoe bat, otter and dormouse have all declined.

In further joyful news - readers are assured this can’t last! - RSPB Cymru campaigners are being thanked for pressing the Welsh government over what it sees as a lifeline for nature - the concisely-named Environment (Principles, Governance and Biodiversity Targets) (Wales) Bill 2026, which has now been passed by the Senedd.

Britain’s ill-fated departure from the EU in 2020 led to a lack of much-needed environmental governance in Wales - essential if the nature emergency that the Senedd itself declared in 2021 is ever going to be sorted out. The legislation is designed to see that harm to the environment is avoided before it happens, and holds individuals or organisations responsible for the cost of rectifying any damage they’ve caused.

Will this, for example, curb the enthusiasm of chainsaw enthusiasts too often indifferent over whether particular tree-felling is authorised or not? And will courts impose fines for rogue cutting which reflect the true commercial value of timber - often not the case currently?

The new law also creates the Office of Environmental Governance Wales (OEGW) to enforce compliance with environmental law. This watchdog is long overdue, Wales having been the only UK country not to create a permanent, independent environmental oversight body since leaving the EU. So scarcely a feather in Labour’s cap.

The legislation further provides a framework for the setting of legally-binding nature-recovery targets, ensuring that future ministers are held to account for the state of nature. Were the Reform nightmare to engulf Wales after the May election, this provision would be of enormous importance.

DESPERATE for a return to the House of Lords, first minister Eluned Morgan deals another blow to her chances of getting re-elected by reaffirming her backing for a new west Wales hospital near Whitland or St Clears, thus confirming her indifference to safeguarding and developing services at mid Wales’s indispensable Bronglais Hospital.

Labour has pledged to spend £4bn on “hospitals of the future”, including rebuilding Wales’s biggest one, University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, if it wins the election. Launching the party's election campaign in Newport, she said redeveloping Wrexham Maelor Hospital, and “a new hospital in west Wales” would also be in the plan.

It was Morgan’s latest slap in the face for Bronglais campaigners, following Hywel Dda health board’s latest, and immoral, refusal to abandon its hated treat-and-transfer downgrading proposal for the hospital’s stroke unit.

Tory health stalwarts and Senedd members Paul Davies and Samuel Kurtz, both candidates for the redrawn Ceredigion Penfro seat, are amongst the disastrously inadequate number of Senedd foot-soldiers seeking equity of health-care for currently sidelined patients in mid and west Wales, western Powys and southern Gwynedd.

The two correctly describe talk of the proposed new southern hospital as a “desperate pre-election distraction” from immediate pressures facing local health services and call instead for bigger investment in both Bronglais and Withybush hospitals.

Paul Davies said: “Services are being centralised and downgraded. Instead of chasing headlines, the Welsh government should focus on safeguarding and strengthening services at Withybush and Bronglais.

“The message from our communities is clear: invest in the hospitals we have so people can access the care they need closer to home.

“Immediate capital and workforce investment in existing facilities is the only credible way to guarantee patient safety, reduce excessive travel times for rural residents, and provide sustainable healthcare across west Wales.”

You’re of course completely right, Paul. The thing to realise, however, is that Eluned has tired of the dominant adversarial mood of the Senedd. She yearns for a return to the leisurely pace of the Lords, for a workplace where discreet siestas during debates are not frowned upon.

Perhaps pre-eminently, she’s increasingly bored by the basic bill of fare offered by the Senedd canteen. I mean, pizzas and fish-and-chips have their place, but what she increasingly longs for are such as quail and smoked chicken terrine and pea and asparagus arancini in the golden, thickly-carpeted splendour of the peers’ dining room. (And those, of course, are only the canapés).