test by Anthony Jones

CALEDONIA

S C O T L A N D ’S H E A RT OF P I NE

Peter Cairns & Niall Benvie

CALEDONIA

S C O T L A N D ’S H E A RT OF P I NE Peter Cairns & Niall Benvie

Concept and images: ÂŠ Peter Cairns, 2011 Text: ÂŠ Niall Benvie, 2011 Design: Anthony Jones - www.tonycreates.com Printed and bound in Poland - www.polskabook.co.uk Printed on FSC certified paper No images in this book have been digitally altered in any way that might misrepresent the subject or could be construed as an attempt to mislead the reader.

The images on the following pages were taken under controlled conditions: 10, 21, 23, 26, 35, 42, 53, 58, 60 and 64. Several images that were taken on commission are reproduced with kind permission from Wild Wonders of Europe and 2020VISION. www.wild-wonders.com www.2020V.org

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers.

CONTENTS:

Biographies ......................... 06

Hungry Eyes ....................... 58

Choices ................................ 136

Foreword ............................ 07

Wet Woods ........................ 72

Case Studies ....................... 148

CALEDONIA is published by Northshots, a trading name of Keerok Ltd. www.northshots.com

Shadows .............................. 08

Edge ...................................... 90

References ........................... 159

Survivors ............................. 26

Icons ...................................... 104

Acknowledgements ........... 160

ISBN: 978-0-9568423-0-5

Engineers ............................. 44

Cathedral ............................. 122

PHOTOGRAPHER Peter Cairns Based in the heart of Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park, Peter is an awardwinning nature photographer with a deep fascination for our relationship with the natural world. In addition to documenting Europe’s high profile wildlife species, Peter covers a diverse range of topical conservation stories, especially those with a human dynamic. Peter authors regular illustrated features and has previously co-authored four books. He was one of the co-founders of the widely acclaimed Tooth & Claw predator project and more recently, worked as Business Director for Wild Wonders of Europe. Peter is a founding director of The Wild Media Foundation and Project Coordinator for 2020VISION. He is an Associate of the International League of Conservation Photographers. www.northshots.com

WRITER Niall Benvie Niall has worked as a professional outdoor photographer and writer since graduating from Dundee University (Geog., Hons.) in 1993 after an earlier career as a fruit farmer. His special interest is in the nature / culture dynamic. He has a passion for using photographs and photography as a way of introducing people to the wonder of the natural world. His initiatives include Rewilding Childhood and Meet Your Neighbours and he has published half a million words of books and articles on nature photography and cultural topics. He was a founding director of Wild Wonders of Europe and a founding fellow of the International League of Conservation Photographers and is on the team of 2020VISION. His most recent book, Outdoor Photography Masterclass, was published in 2010. www.imagesfromtheedge.com

Laurent Villeret / Dolce Vita

A frayed edge of the vast boreal forests of Canada and Scandinavia, the few surviving remnants of Scotland’s Great Wood represent some of the last wilderness areas in the British Isles. So why should we invest in revitalizing a diminished and fragmented, mainly lost landscape? What good is native pine forest? What do we need it for? The answer to some extent depends on the store you set on keeping your home in good order. We can, of course, survive in a place with a leaking roof, an overgrown garden and rotten woodwork, but isn’t it better to live somewhere that is well maintained? The asset you have to pass on to your children is certainly worth more. Practically, pine forests sequester carbon and are net producers of oxygen. They provide shelter, building materials, fuel and stability for fragile soils. They are sponges that regulate the flow of water into rivers. These things all matter to society: if the forests didn’t do the job for us, then we would have to pay to stop a part of our ‘home’ from becoming derelict. To those who have spent any time amongst the old pines, stilling themselves so intensely that they feel part of the forest, the Wood of Caledon is more than a mere provider of services. It is home to some of Scotland’s most charismatic animals: red squirrels, crested tits, pine martens, red deer and capercaillie. These creatures provide

FOREWORD a link to a greater boreal realm far beyond these shores. Those who are working to reconnect and expand Scotland’s forest practise ‘cathedral thinking’.The results won’t be seen in their own lifetimes, but they are driven by a vision of what could be, inspired by the sight of wild forests elsewhere. Woodland regeneration is about more than simply planting trees in bare glens; it is an investment in our social, cultural and economic future. In this 2011 International Year of Forests declared by the United Nations, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), along with many of its partners, is working towards realising the full potential of forests for the well-being of people and the planet. An estimated 1.2 billion hectares of deforested areas more than the size of Canada - offer opportunities for restoration. Scotland could become part of the largest natural restoration initiative the world has ever seen, and a step towards changing the outlook for the world’s forests. Now wouldn’t that be something to be proud of?

Julia Marton-Lefèvre IUCN Director General

“

SHADOWS

”

Going to the woods is going home for I suppose we came from the woods originally. John Muir

6000 BC. The only paths between the massive pines were those created by the animals that moved through the forest: red deer, sometimes aurochsen seeking shelter, and wild boar. The hunter trod lightly, feeling the spongy moss yield beneath his hide-shod foot, shifting his weight as heather stems crackled.This was somewhere that inspired dread; he knew that groggy bears, bad tempered and hungry after the winter, were hunting the same woods. And before the Great Wave had destroyed his coastal village the previous autumn, wolves had often ventured out of the forest during lean times and slaughtered the deer he encouraged to its edge. Above, the broad canopy sifted the wind, the sound reminding him of the waves rolling up his gravelly shore.

As he moved through a gap towards the marsh in search of over-wintered cranberries, he heard a commotion some distance behind. All his senses became suddenly heightened. He felt his heart beating hard in this throat and his spine tingle. Later, he retraced his steps to find the story dug into the sandy sides of the gap. A deer had clearly come sprinting over the top of the bank and hurled itself down to where he had walked minutes before. Judging by the depth of the prints leading up the opposite bank, the animal was being chased. In contrast to the deerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s frantic scramble, the prints of the wolf looked measured, following the deerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in a perfect line. One even coincided perfectly with the hunterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own.

Amid the current pre-occupation with global warming, it is easy to forget that during much of the previous million years, the Earth has been considerably cooler than it is now. And if we trust history - as written in layers of long dead marine plankton - to repeat itself, it will be so again. We are living during a precious inter-glacial period, a window during which land under polar lockdown for 100,000 years once again allows plants to root, and nurtures the communities of soil life on which almost every other terrestrial animal or plant ultimately depends. The retreat of Arctic weather systems some 13,000 years ago marked the beginning of the end of the last Ice Age. There were some false starts, reconciliations with glacial times, but the slow process of greening the weary, icebleached land began in earnest 10,000 years ago as the warming influence of the long banished Gulf Stream began to be felt once more.

The beginning In landscapes scraped clean by glaciers a mile deep, the process of building fresh soil starts with the colonisation of bare ground by lichens and mosses. As a thin crust of organic matter accumulates, it provides the seedbed for grasses and in time, higher plants.

For a long time the greening was hesitant; post-glacial trauma deterred vigorous growth and at the start only lichens and mosses coloured the sombre tundra. In time pioneering trees - birch, willow and aspen - began to establish outposts where soil conditions and exposure permitted. This was not an invasion, but more a cautious recolonisation of lands abandoned a hundred millennia before. With summer temperatures creeping up to 7 or 8 degrees cen-

tigrade, oak and alder reclaimed the heavy clay soils while Scots pine and hazel thrived on the lighter alluvium. Willows and aspen crowded along watercourses and tried their luck on the floodplains. Some willows reached high into the mountains and 7000 BP (Before Present), with the help of an especially benign climate, formed their own zone almost 800 metres up in the Cairngorms. After a long march from its refuge in the far north west of Scotland and from further south, Scots pine settled luxuriantly into the sheltered glens of the central Highlands as well as in more exposed, challenging locations. By this time, the forests had their complement of the animals we regard today as denizens of the wildwood. Notions of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;nativenessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; are to some extent arbitrary but this is the point in time (given the limited influence of people in the landscape) from which species are now considered native and to which we extend full residency rights. These native animals werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mere occupants of a wooded landscape; they gnawed and grazed and browsed and dug it into shape, determined its density and character, structure and flavour.They formed the wildwood as much as they were formed by it and it is these forms we look to today as the ideal, as the reference point.

Between about 6000 and 4000 years BP Scotland’s forest cover was at its most extensive; between a half and two thirds of the land was wildwood, the areas in between too wet, stony or exposed to host trees. Animals living there had long since struck their own accords of give and take where the number of predators was determined by how much prey there was to eat, and the prey numbers mirrored the forest’s productivity. Mature trees - some pines live for 500 years - eventually softened, crumbled and became incorporated once more into the soil that had nurtured them. Seedlings of other trees and shrubs vied for light and nutrients while predators indirectly reduced grazing pressure on the emerging generations. And every so often, like a purgative, lightning-instigated fire would dash through the pinewoods, preparing a new seedbed as it went. Perhaps more than at any time before or since, the wildwood was in equilibrium.

When the last Ice Age was at its peak, sea levels were about 100 metres lower than today. ‘Britain’ was merely a western extension of continental Europe and so there was free movement of animals back and forth until such time as the land bridge was inundated about 9000 BP. Much of the Arctic fauna, including lemming, mammoth, woolly rhino, arctic fox, musk ox and reindeer, that had found a living in Ice Age Britain, dwindled as

conditions warmed. Wolves and mountain hares were two exceptions and soon they were joined in the expanding forests by European bears and lynx, pine martens, red foxes, badgers, wild boar, aurochsen (wild ox), elk and beavers. Colonisation by birds in contrast, was less impeded by rising sea levels although species unable or disinclined to make sea crossings, such as capercaillie, must have become established on the ‘British’ landmass before it became isolated.

Tundra carpet Prior to invasion by birch and willow, the tundra that covered much of Britain consisted of plants like bearberry and crowberry that are well adapted for cold, exposed conditions and can still be found at altitude today.

Scotland then was not a welcoming place to the people who had drifted up from the south and initially most settlement was concentrated in coastal areas where vegetation was sparser and movement, by boat, freer. There was also plenty to eat there. Any assaults these settlers may have made on the wildwood with axe or fire were trivial compared to those about to be wrought by another change in climate: this time to much wetter, cooler conditions, starting about 4500 years ago.

This was a wretched time when centuries-old forests were slowly drowned in waterlogged soils and trees entombed in rapidly forming peat. Flat lands and hollows that had previously grown trees became smothered in blanket bog and pines unwise enough to root there would endure a hungry life, stunted and jaundiced by the paucity of essential elements. Decomposition slowed in these austere times and mor humus, a sour concoction of rotting pine needles, deepened, making it ever harder for seedlings to reach the friendlier mineral soil below. The climate then, rather than people, struck the first blow against the wildwood. Neolithic farmers may have contributed to its decline but concerted forest clearance didn’t begin until the middle Bronze Age, some 3,000 years ago. Empowered by superior tools and hungry for grains and meat, men began to rethink the wildwood not as a place of dread or wonder but merely as an obstacle in need of clearance. The war on Scotland’s wildwood had begun.

Pioneers Silver and downy birch quickly colonised the impoverished soils left in the wake of retreating glaciers. Their leaves and decaying wood contributed year on year to enriching the soilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s organic content, providing fertile ground for longer-lived species.

Arctic survivor In many parts of northern Europe the mountain hare is a creature of lowland forests. Hares, along with wolves, were able to adapt to the changing environment better than most, their white winter coat providing camouflage from golden eagles - their principal concern to this day.

Skeletons As the climate warmed and soil fertility improved, new colonisers put down tentative roots in the embryonic wildwood. Alders - the wet-footed birch - crowded the riverbanks providing shade and nutrients, much to the liking of sheltering trout and salmon. As rivers changed direction, alders were left to dry and then die.

Fairytale forest Clean air and high humidity create favourable conditions for mosses, lichens and liverworts in a Highland birchwood. Such an impenetrable wall of trees encouraged early settlers to the coast where food was more plentiful - and more easily obtained. The Hunted The cold stare of a wild boar is that of the hunted. Unless proven otherwise everything is to be viewed with suspicion - a strategy that ensured the boarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s survival for millennia.

Soldier pines The last rays of a weak winter sun caress the rich orange bark of a row of straight pines. In a matter of moments, the light is turned off and the forest prepares to endure a frigid winter night.

European elk The largest member of the deer family, elk would have been a valuable, if challenging, quarry for Mesolithic hunters. It is unclear whether hunting, climate change or habitat loss brought about their demise in Scotland, but elsewhere in Europe where conditions are similar, the species flourishes.

Skyline pines These isolated pines clinging to life on an exposed ridge pose a tantalising question: Do we accept them as the final bastions of a dying forest, or embrace their potential for becoming the foundation of a new wildwood?

“

SURVIVORS

”

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. William Blake

Today, lowland wooded ravines act as reminders of what the wildwood was like before people cut it and let their livestock graze away any prospect of self-restoration. The soil in these redoubts is unstable; their sides too steep to make felling and removal of timber practical, or grazing attractive. Woodland plants with nowhere else left to go gratefully crowd their undisturbed slopes. The ravine does all it can to resist â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;improvementâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and skulks below the surface of the cultural landscape, all wild and green and humid. There is the sense of entering another realm, another time; these secret places smell and taste of Caledonia.

Wooded ravine, Inshriach Forest Some of the wildest woodlands are found in ravines that fissure the Scottish landscape. Here a mosaic of birch, rowan and pine crowd a boulder-strewn hillside.

For early farmers, the forest was a stern opponent, a massive obstacle to cultivation and one that took a huge effort to overcome. It resisted fire; with the exception of pine, the tree cover of northern Britain 4000 years ago, was pretty much incombustible as standing timber. It yielded to the axe only in exchange for endless hours of sweat. After felling and clearance, grazing animals may have prevented seedlings from becoming established, but doughty stumps would have remained, hampering the plough until they eventually crumbled away. If clearings for cereal cultivation were enriched by ash, it was only from the brash of felled trees. At that time, given the low level of wood cutting technology, much of the felled timber would have been burned rather than milled. But at some point early

on it was recognised that the re-growth from stumps, especially hazel, willow and oak, was actually more useful and versatile than great trunks and boughs, and woods soon began to be managed for coppice. This didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mark the return of the wildwood however, only a domesticated shadow of it. With the fragmentation and disappearance of forest cover, particularly in southern Britain, the animals that lived there died out or, if they could, fled. Aurochsen (wild ox) had perhaps disappeared a thousand years before the Roman occupation. Brown bears were jostled towards extinction, most likely during, or shortly after, Roman times, by hunting and a shrinking forest. The landscape settled by the Romans was a cultural one, dominated by fields rather than forests, at least in the lowlands. And many of the inhabitants of the wildwood were already on the run. In the obscure centuries that followed the Roman era, it is evident from carved Pictish stones that wild animals and birds still figured large in the popular imagination. Eagles, deer, boar, wolves and almost certainly a lynx, appear on various stones in northern and eastern Scotland. Even the carving of a bear holds out the tantalising possibility that the species hung on into the 8th century. How much the representation of these animals reflects their abundance is not clear, but it is fair to assume that there

was still enough wildwood to host some. Nevertheless, by the High Middle Ages (c. 900 - 1300 AD) the Scottish landscape was probably more open than we see even today. The climate of the 12th and 13th centuries AD was especially clement, allowing crops to grow at higher altitudes. An increased food supply encouraged the proliferation of people and their animals, and that in turn put further pressure on relict woodlands, so much so that by the start of the 17th century, the Lowlands had lost almost all of their tree cover - and the wild animals associated with it. Although the beaver persisted at least until the late 1500’s, its presence should not be taken as an indication of extensive riparian woodland. When pressed, the beaver can survive in very marginal conditions as seen in modern Europe, where in some places every last bit of suitable habitat is occupied. It would be a mistake to assume, given its widespread clearance, that our forebears cared nothing for forests. Landowners hunted in them; for others, they were a source of firewood, perhaps even a place of love and refuge. Oak woodlands that were commercially harvested, be it for coppice (used to make charcoal for iron smelting) or for their bark (used in leather tanning) were protected from marauding sheep and goats. This managed woodland may not have had the variety of life of the original wildwood - or those in ravines - but it retained greater po-

tential for future rewilding by natural regeneration than woods that were left to be grazed bare. In reality, once chemical substitutes for bark tannin were discovered and mineral coal replaced charcoal in the smelting process, many managed forests were abandoned to hungry herbivores and entered a period of decline characterized by poor regeneration. Pine forest, in particular, benefits from fire that burns away some of the surface layers of heather and mor humus but in its absence, a seed bed can be created when wild boar root through it. This tasty species was most likely lost from Scotland in the 1600’s as tree cover reached a low point and the impact of the Little Ice Age on agricultural productivity made wild game an essential supplement to the diet. And although capercaillie didn’t become extinct until 1785, this large bird (that tastes much better than popular myth suggests) must have been tempting quarry too. Predators didn’t fare much better. Lynx, an animal that thrives in dense woodland with good populations of roe deer and hares, probably disappeared from Scotland in the 10th century. Pine martens were adaptable enough to survive even in quite a deforested landscape; their problems really began with the new demand for game management in the 19th century. Wolves clung on until the

mid 18th century - surprisingly late given their popular demonisation. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s testament to their tenacity and wiliness that given the hunting pressure on them (not least because of their fondness for mutton when natural prey, such as red deer, is scarce) that they took so long to be eradicated. In much of its European range the red deer is a forest animal - and heather an under-storey shrub. With the removal of their natural woodland homes, each have adapted to life on the open hill - one becoming a monoculture, the other, a shadow of its former self. The red deer that live in continental forests have a better diet than those that make do on the impoverished Scottish hills and are usually substantially larger and heavier as a result. Denied access to sheltering woodland, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a tough life for exiled deer. As well as ravines, ledges inaccessible to sheep and deer in the mountains sometimes host a legacy woodland flora to remind us of what has been lost: wood rush, bitter vetchling, wood cranesbill, toothed wintergreen and golden rod. Their home may have vanished but these plants strongly hint that it could return again. European brown bear Wholesale forest clearance in the centuries leading up to Roman occupation would have forced bears to the wildest fringes where even their catholic diet could no longer support them.

Attitudes towards wild woodland are quite different today from the past but it would be a massive conceit to

believe that we could recreate the wildwood by our own hand from scratch; the complexity of the relationships that comprise a vital, wild forest are beyond imagination. But perhaps we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have to. In some places, it is just possible that centuries of siege have failed to extinguish the potential for self-regeneration. Perhaps we need only stop taking from the land for a few years and allow wild nature to start rebuilding those relationships; to allow wildness to creep back out of the ravine into the cultural landscape once more.We have nothing to lose - and much to gain.

Ancient woodland, Rothiemurchus Forest A sea of mossy hummocks indicates the presence of ancient woodland and hints at a period of unrestricted natural process holding sway.

Hardy, hungry and hated Wolves, like most canids, are resourceful and clung on to a precarious Scottish existence long after the lynx and bear. But although 250 years is a geological blink of the eye, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s long enough for the wolf - and its far-reaching effect on its prey - to be consigned to our cultural memory bank.

As forest cover shrank, so red deer took to the hills where nutrition is poorer and living conditions more hostile. Wetland architect Beavers were still common enough during the reign of King David 1 (in the mid 1100â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s) for their pelts to be traded. Resilient and adaptable, they are nevertheless easy to hunt. The veteran This pine, now in its twilight years, can perhaps recall in its adolescence providing shelter for a wandering wolf pack.

Arboreal acrobat Pine martens can survive in a poorly forested landscape but find most of what they need more easily in woodland. Hunted for their fur for centuries, it was then their penchant for game that ultimately brought Scottish martens to the verge of extinction by the start of the 20th century.

Eurasian crane Although the history is patchy, it is likely that cranes still bred in Scotland up to around 500 years ago. Loch Insh in the Cairngorms appears to have been known as Linn Garan in Pictish times, which translates as Crane Lake. In 1578 an observer in Ross reported that cranes were as common as herons.

Sea eagle Few people, it seems, liked the sea eagle very much until today. Although normally associated with coastal habitats, the sea eagle routinely nests in trees and across much of its range, hunts over forest and bog woodland, often seeking out carrion.

Pine plantation Modern industrial forests normally lack the biodiversity of ancient pinewoods but have nevertheless been a lifeline for pine martens and red squirrels amongst others.

Eurasian lynx This shadowy roe deer specialist is a solitary ambush predator. Some of Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most inaccessible and forested glens could well have been the final stronghold for this most enigmatic cat. Although radiocarbon dating of lynx bones puts its extinction at around 1500 years ago, literary references suggest that it might have survived much longer.

The loner Without neighbours this solitary pine may be the last of its kind on this remote hillside.

“

ENGINEERS

”

Wha’s ever heard o’ trees in a deer furest? Deer Stalker, West Scotland

How are we to judge the health of a forest? Is it by the age of the trees and whether they are regenerating or not? Is it by the abundance of game or the presence of top predators? How about the variety of wild plants or diversity of insects? Well, all these are indicators but ultimately we need to look into the soil to understand the real driving force behind a forest’s vitality: fungi. Not the spore-carrying toadstools we’re familiar with above the surface, but the unseen mass of tiny threads - hyphae - that are woven through the soil and around roots to form the main body of the fungus - the mycelium. Without these mycorrhizal partnerships, trees and all the other plants in the forest would be unable to access vital nutrients from decaying vegetation and the fungus would be deprived of sugar. The hyphae shield delicate roots from disease and produce chemicals that allow the plants to access the compounds they need for healthy growth. Many species of orchid are so tightly bound with their mycorrhiza that they will not even germinate without them, and other plants cannot thrive in the long term if the network is compromised (by, for example, top dressing with inorganic fertiliser). The work of restoring vigorous forest ecosystems starts at the most mundane level: of ensuring that the soil is in good heart, that it has potential to re-grow a wildwood. Winter wetland A wild woodland doesn’t always conform to people’s idea of how it should look; in a vital forest, the horizontal trees are just as important as the vertical ones.

The complexity of ecological processes makes it impossible to provide a blueprint for ‘best practice’ forest

management, be that directly by people or indirectly by wildlife managed by people. Delicate networks of vegetation in the soil for example, are damaged by all forms of disturbance (including deep ploughing), yet as we have seen already, fire and rooting by wild boar can help the regeneration of pinewoods by clearing away or breaking up deep heather and in drier, eastern woods, some of the surface humus too, making it easier for seedlings to root. Wind-thrown trees also break the network but allow more light to reach plants on the forest floor and even create, in some old pine woods, a home for a rare diving beetle in the flooded depression left by a fallen tree’s roots.The flooding caused by beavers is, in the short term, harmful to trees but in the medium and long term creates opportunities for species such as woodpeckers and crested tits that need dead wood (as well as a whole host of aquatic animals that thrive in their shallow ponds). Given a few decades these ponds often revert to dry woodland anyway as wet-tolerant species like alder and willows colonise their margins. And while is it hard to view the harm caused by insect pests such as elm bark beetle (responsible for Dutch elm disease) and pine weevil positively, their impact is reduced in natural forests with a mix of species and they too add to the stock of dead wood and the range of species a forest can support.

What is clear then is that in the long run, unregulated natural processes often yield the best returns in terms of the variety of life. Unfortunately that is often contrary to the popular idea of what constitutes good, responsible, management. People don’t like untidiness. They don’t like fallen trees blocking paths; they view ancient limbs split in two by the weight of snow, as ‘damaged’ (rather than reshaped), and if they have property adjacent to a pinewood, they are understandably terrified of fire taking hold. For many people ‘hands-off’ is synonymous with ‘neglect’ and a moral imperative to ‘manage’ has grown out of this sense. We shouldn’t overlook, either, loyalty to a set of long established management principles. In putting forward a new model we need to argue convincingly why it offers advantages over the status quo - and tread carefully.

Pest or partner? As a landscape manager par excellence, our land use priorities don’t always harmonize with the beaver’s. Nevertheless, they do the job of wetland restoration far more effectively - and cheaply - than we ever can.

The animal that currently highlights the polarization of opinion between managers and non-interventionists better than any other is the European beaver. Here is a rodent assuming our role as landscape managers, altering sometimes quite extensive areas without reference to our land use objectives. These considerations, perhaps more than its usefulness in wetland management, have informed the disquiet in some quarters about its re-establishment in Scotland. In parts of their range where wolves are present, such as in Latvia, fear of predation tends to

concentrate beaver activity to the safe area within close proximity of the water’s edge. In a forest ecosystem with a full complement of predators, the behaviour and number of other grazers and browsers - such as red and roe deer - is altered, with implications for vegetation patterns and regeneration within the woodland. In the Scottish context however, the number of deer and their impact on a pine forest ecosystem is largely determined by people; how we manage their numbers and control their access to woodland. While the role of wood ants may be less obvious than that of larger animals, they nevertheless act as a vital brake on the number of other insects intent on munching the forest bare. They themselves have quite specific requirements both in terms of the balance of light and shade that reaches their colonies, and avoiding the disturbance associated with intensive grazing and clear felling. More than anything else, lines of industrious ants going about their business are a sure sign of a pine or birch wood in good heart. It is all well and good restoring or conserving isolated woods, to rebuild them from the microrrhiza up but if they are not part of a more extensive, linked network of forests they will soon hit a green ceiling; a limit to their functionality. How are successful animals and plants to

disperse if the wood is disconnected from others? Do we really want to end up with a series of museum exhibits - or would we rather have a vital, living landscape full of surprises and ecological intrigue that people can draw inspiration and pleasure from? And a living.

A beaver’s work Beavers fell smaller trees to get access to the more succulent bark and shoots they cannot otherwise reach. Larger trees, in the right place, may be felled to provide the starting point for a dam. Beavers build dams only where they need to manage water levels so that their burrows always remain submerged - the best insurance against predators.

It is tempting, particularly if grant aid is available, to plant an open hillside with native species to make a quick woodland. But if the site lacks the botanical and insect (not to mention micorrhizal) diversity of a wild woodland, the exercise is cosmetic; the picture on the jigsaw won’t be recognisable, let alone complete. The alternative approach involves fencing out sheep, goats and deer (birds of prey will take care of the voles and rabbits) and seeing what the legacy seed bank in the soil has to offer. It may be chaotic, unmanaged even, but the wood that results is more likely to reflect local conditions and develop to suit them. In some sites, particularly those afflicted with bracken, wild boar can be recruited to help create better conditions for seedlings to root. In others, carefully managed fire might be all that is needed to unleash the wild potential of the site. And even deer, so long the whipping boy for hindering the regeneration of native woodland, have a central role to play in the rewilding of the Highlands, at the right density. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that there are many jobs

at stake in ‘the conservation industry’; it would be naïve to deny that management decisions are sometimes influenced by self-interest. We should then be wary of attempts to claim ‘ownership’ of the job of rewilding when in fact a less interventionist approach (allowing the beavers to do the work, for example, in wetland restoration) may, in the long run, produce similar outcomes for relatively little cost. In the process of rewilding, it’s our job to lay the foundations for wild nature to build its own home again. We don’t need to advise on the decor.

Beaver beneficiaries Woodpeckers, like many other forest birds, are grateful for the work of beavers, as they need standing dead wood in which to excavate a nest chamber.

Waterfowl too benefit from a flooded forest; the ponds behind beaver dams create a rich wetland habitat - and safe nesting sites for mute swans.

Wild boar These animals find much of their food by rooting around in the top few centimetres of soils with their snouts and tusks. They are the unwitting cultivators of the forest, creating the right conditions for seedlings to take root.

Forest icon or political pawn? Much of Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forested landscape, as well as huge swathes bereft of tree cover, is today shaped by the interrelationship between two species: red deer and Man. So often banished from its natural forest home by high fences, the red deer has become something of a whipping boy in the discussion about forest regeneration.

For forest advocates, the grazing pressure brought about by thousands of hungry mouths, means there is little chance of widespread self-regeneration. For others, red deer are an economic resource and part of a cultural landscape that is unrecognisable with the past, and should stay that way.

Golden eagle If top predators are thriving it is normally a sign that an ecosystem is in good heart; if there is not much to eat, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll not thrive for very long. This young golden eagle without a territory of its own might wander many miles in search of scarce food. By suppressing the natural order of predator-prey relationships, we deprive not only carrion-eating eagles, but also a raft of scavengers from crested tits to burying beetles. We also starve the land of vital nutrients.

Crested tit Birds like crested tits are quick to exploit the work of others, be it deadwood created by beavers or carcasses opened by eagles. They themselves are engineers, dispersing seed and ultimately becoming food for larger avian hunters.

“

HUNGRY EYES

”

A society is defined not only by what it creates but by what it refuses to destroy. John Sawhill

To walk in a forest where bears live is to experience a primitive sensation otherwise absent in our modern lives. The knowledge that we are no longer, necessarily, at the head of the food chain heightens our senses, puts us on alert, makes us a little cautious. The fact that in Europe, attacks on people by bears are very rare (and normally, intentionally or otherwise, provoked) does little to diminish these archaic sensibilities. I once experienced the strength of an orphaned bear cub as it grasped me in its arms as keenly as it would its own mother. I felt the potential of its claws and wondered at the power of those innocent canines. It was to experience something primeval, something long lost, almost forgotten. When we hear the howls of wolves reverberate around a still, chilly pine forest before dawn, the sound fills our whole body, making us tingle and question: how far, how many, how hungry? And later in the day, if we crawl into an empty wolves’ den and are almost overcome by a stench not unlike men who haven’t washed for weeks, we feel as though we are trespassing and leave quickly, troubled.

Common buzzard The huge growth in the buzzard population over the last 20 years could be seen as a triumph of enlightened wildlife legislation, but it is also opening up fault lines between some game managers and the conservation community. Are there now ‘too many’?

Predators, especially large ones, bring us - and the forest - alive. But they also stir ancient memories and provoke powerful passions. Those who have lost livestock or pets

to predators, those who have despaired at the ‘excess killing’ by pine martens and foxes, or have seen the panic that the mere presence of a goshawk can cause amongst forest grouse, rarely have much sympathy for tooth or talon. And while few would like to see our current populations of predators extirpated, the legal favouritism they are perceived to enjoy sticks in the craw of many. It can’t be denied that predators play a key role in the ecological integrity of the wildwood. In the case of those bigger than a stoat, not just because of their impact on the number of herbivores - be it long-eared owls eating voles or wolves killing deer - but because of how their presence affects the distribution of prey in the forest, and the consequences for it. In areas re-colonised by wolves, deer shun riverbanks where they are vulnerable to ambush and head for more open territory. This allows riverside vegetation to flourish where previously it was continually grazed. This obviously benefits beavers but also deters them from straying too far from the riverbank where they are prone to wolf attack. Carcasses feed not only the predator but also a host of more humble creatures from carrion beetles to crested tits. A new set of relationships is made possible by large predators.

There may be benefits to the prey species too. Instinctively, predators tend to target those animals that are most easily caught: the old, infirm and young. Regular, sustainable predation will tend in the long run to favour fitter animals and through their greater breeding success, the quality of that population improves. In a balanced ecosystem, predators numbers are determined by the abundance of prey; when lynx move into a new area, the existing roe deer population can take a heavy hit until they adjust to the new threat in their midst. Over the 5 - 10 year adjustment period roe deer numbers can drop by 50 percent before equilibrium between predator and prey is established. If roe deer numbers recover strongly, so the lynx can rear more young to maturity; they in turn will eat more deer until a balance is struck again.

Red kite Similar divergent perspectives surround the widespread re-establishment of red kites. Despite their growing economic role as wildlife celebrities, they continue to be frowned upon - and killed - when they are perceived as a threat to rural livelihoods.

But it is rarely as simple as that. If a prey species - such as capercaillie - is struggling to maintain its numbers, perhaps because of wet weather when the chicks are young, or their preferred woodland is in decline, or their breeding cycle is being disturbed by people in the wood, then additional pressure from not just one or two, but a host of predators, may be the straw that breaks their back. No predator alone may be relying on the capercaillie - this grouse is just part of the buffet - so their numbers won’t

necessarily move in tandem with the capercaillie’s, especially if other food sources are plentiful. Under these circumstances killing predators, especially foxes and crows, can have clear short terms benefits for a variety of prey species with poor survival rates or reproductive capacity. But this being a food web, rather than a simple food chain, there may be unintended consequences thanks to a hierarchy amongst the predators. Larger predators in woodland tend to deter, or actively hunt smaller ones; they are, potentially, competitors or even a threat to their own young. Lynx famously ‘clean’ woodland of foxes and feral cats - with benefits for ground nesting birds along the way. However, fewer foxes means more food for stoats and weasels - which themselves have a fondness for eggs and chicks. Pull one thread and we can end up unravelling the close-knit ecological fabric of the forest. Large predators may be the high profile stars of the forest ecosystem but in their contribution to the engine that drives the forest’s productivity and vitality, they are no more important than mycorrhiza. Fungi in the soil put the fuel in the engine’s tank; predators provide the lubrication to ensure that all the components function smoothly. Too often, perhaps, predators are viewed only as takers and their role as givers is not fully understood or valued. Without them, the engine quickly seizes up and needs expensive repairs to restore it to working order.

Living with predators and restoring the ecological integrity of woodland that is denied by their absence, requires us to be smart if we donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want the whole community to implode. In the short term, active management might be needed because our cultural priorities and timescales are often at odds with those delivered by natural process. It is clear though that such is the complexity of relationships we are dealing with, that in the long run we have no realistic, or affordable alternative but to allow wild nature a free rein. Our decision-making tends to be linear and simplistic, framed in terms of problem and solution. It is this way of thinking that has landed us with the impoverished landscape we see in much of the Highlands today.

Goshawk The return of the goshawk, a formidable woodland predator, provides a further challenge to our attitudes towards growing predator populations.

Being smart ultimately entails realising our limitations as managers.

Golden eagle A traditional crag nester in Scotland, golden eagles do build tree nests and are well equipped to hunt over a variety of landscapes. Despite its iconic status, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a component in the expanding population of raptors and that will make life a challenge for this young bird.

Pine marten Legal protection and the cover provided by commercial forests have both helped pine martens return from the brink of extinction in Scotland. Some argue it has now become â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;too successfulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and its impact on birds like capercaillie warrants its control.

Scottish wildcat As one of the rarest mammals in the country, the wildcat presently enjoys political favour. Assuming conservation efforts are successful (and there are no guarantees), it may yet find itself answering the same accusations as the pine marten. Meanwhile its ability to interbreed with feral cats is more of a threat to its future. Red fox When a fox is killed, another soon fills the vacuum it leaves. Nevertheless, intensive, repeated killing can have local short-term benefits, especially for ground nesting birds such as capercaillie until the number of stoats and weasels grows. Pull one thread...

Caledonian dawn A healthy forest cannot be so without oil in its engine. The process of death, decay and regeneration is fuelled through the role of predators.

Autumnal blaeberry and grasses The act of predation sets an ecological processor into action with beneficiaries ranging from the killer itself to the burying beetles, which enter the remains and feed the soil from which new life springs. Close examination of the intricate complexity of the forest floor should remind us of the limits of our own ability to manage what happens in a forest.

European brown bear - mother and cub The experience of how other northern European countries live with predators - big and small - should help to inform how we manage them in Scotland. Sometimes they bring unexpected benefits, ecologically and economically.

“

WET WOODS

”

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. Nelson Henderson

Waterlogged forest, be it as a result of seasonal flooding or as part of the inexorable process that transforms shallow open water into woodland, is full of uncertainty. Is this place actually more water than wood? Can we trust the roots of reclining alders and willows to support our weight? And what about the spongy sphagnum that sits on the fence, unwilling to commit itself to either land or water? Ambiguity and change weave into a fascinating subplot in the story of the wildwood. For here is a glimpse of a wilderness that resists plough and saw far better than most but which, too often, has been unable to resist the drainage ditch.

The golden light of a stormy summer’s evening bathes a peaty lochan in Glenfeshie

‘Succession’ begins as soon as a flow of water slows and sediment held in suspension falls and begins to accumulate. Over time, aquatic plants take root, further slowing the flow and a combination of their remains and ever more sediment deposition brings the floor of the lake closer to the surface. Once reeds establish in the shallows, drying really gets going, assisted by a vanguard of willows that don’t mind getting their feet wet. This is an alien environment. It is hard to find a way into and through these woods comfortably - especially when the ground moves beneath your feet and glistening pathways can lead into bottomless mires. It is precisely the ambiguous nature of wet woodlands -

where we can neither camp nor swim - that makes them such rich places and home to a huge variety of animals from ospreys to the ten-spotted pot beetle. Rivers flowing through their heart seasonally replenish and reshape them; fallen timber transforms, over time, into long spongy islands that in turn become microcosms of the greater woodland as seedlings root amongst their moss. Perhaps the defining sound of the wet forest in Baltic Europe is the crane’s metallic bugle. Cranes, given the choice, like to nest in open glades deep in wet woodland or bogs where they are out of sight of people and predators. Although hidden, their notes resonate between the trees and propagate in the still air of early morning, commanding attention, drawing us like sirens to the source of the music. The first over-topped Wellington boot, however, soon puts pay to that romantic notion and the cranes can truly claim the wet forest as their own. Cranes stopped breeding regularly in Britain in the 1600’s as their boggy refuges were drained. Although a colony of about 40 birds has been established in The Norfolk Broads for over 30 years, no wider, natural, re-colonisation has yet taken place. But thanks to intensive protection, the bird is thriving in parts of northern and western Europe and Britain may soon see its tiny population joined by Continental birds.

Floodwater tapestry Alder, willow and to a lesser extent birch, are always grateful for a footbath and will take hold wherever a regular dousing is promised. Here alongside the River Spey, a forest tapestry is weaved by the seasonal floodwater.

Whether or not it does may rely, to some extent, on whether we allow the beaver to once more take its place in the landscape as water engineer par excellence. There is evidence, in Latvia at least, that beaver and crane populations grow in parallel, as beavers create ideal crane habitat. Indeed, cranes are just one of several collateral beneficiaries of beaver activity. The drowned decaying trees of flooded woodland host a multitude of insects attractive to many birds as well as providing nest sites for woodpeckers and goldeneye. The ponds behind beaver dams - built to ensure that access to their bankside burrows is always underwater - act as nurseries for various species of fish and the aquatic web of life they are part of.When a beaver family moves away and the dam falls into disrepair, otters quickly take up residence in the abandoned burrows. Beavers fell larger trees, not for dam building but to get access to the more succulent branches high up in the tree, and in doing so provide food for rodents, such as voles and larger mammals like hares that also enjoy the bark. Aspen, although currently quite scarce in Scotland, is much the favourite tree and any serious attempt to re-establish the beaver as a wetland manager should be accompanied by extensive planting of this elegant native.

time keeping their beat clear of anything that impedes the movement of fish, or encourages the accumulation of debris, so bringing back an animal that actively creates dams is anathema. This is particularly a concern where migratory fish are concerned. But ask a Norwegian fisheries biologist about â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the beaver problemâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll receive a blank look. Beavers and salmon co-existed happily for thousands of years before we saw fit to intervene in the management of either species, and if the Norwegian experience is anything to go by, the threat is misconceived. While European beavers do build dams, they are modest in size (rarely more than 1 metre high and steeply inclined) - and negotiable - compared to those of their Canadian cousin.

Opposition to the return of the beaver inevitably focuses on the perceived threat to fisheries and interruption to water flow; many bailiffs, after all, spend a good deal of

The goldeneye, in contrast to the beaver, needed just a little encouragement in colonising Scotland and caused little controversy as it did so. Some ducks began to spend

Foresters whose tracks are undermined by burrows and see standing timber becoming waterlogged may seem to have a legitimate grudge against the beaver. But many recognise that the sort of places that beavers would prefer to live in modern Britain, rarely grow quality timber anyway and rank the amenity value and economic potential of beaver watching ahead of the loss of some struggling Norway spruce.

have a great fondness for eggs and have quickly learned to associate nest boxes with food. Studies from Finland indicate that up to 50 percent of clutches may be lost to martens; the figure in Scotland is unclear but some boxes have been removed simply because every clutch was being predated. By showing willingness to colonise parts of the Scottish Highlands, the goldeneye, with its homeland in the heart of Scandinavia, somehow gives the stamp of approval to a vision that sees the restoration of a wilder, more northern character to our own fragments of the boreal forest.

the summer in Scotland instead of returning to the boreal forests of Norway and Sweden as early as the 1950â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s. The first pair bred in 1970. But what has really encouraged the breeding population to grow to its current level of about 200 pairs has been the provision of nest boxes. Goldeneye are arboreal nesters but cavities are in short supply and this acts as a considerable brake on population growth. After an initial reluc-

tance (it was almost a quarter of a century after the first boxes were put up before they were used regularly) goldeneye are now enthusiastic box nesters. But what has been a boon for the ducks has also been a bonus for the rapidly expanding population of pine martens in the Highlands. Martens

Pinewood reflections The mirror-calm, peat-laden waters of Loch Mallachie sustain little obvious life in early winter. Save for the trumpeting calls of roosting geese, the sound of silence can be deafening.

Part of that vision could include the moose; a great gangly forest herbivore equally at home on land and in shallow ponds where they feed on mineral-rich aquatic plants.The last wild moose in Scotland probably roamed modern day Wigtownshire about 4000 years ago. Apart from being rather spectacular to see, moose - referred to as elk in northern Europe - play an important part in the ecology of the woodlands it inhabits, not least through trampling and defecating. Each adult animal, it is estimated, breaks up the equivalent of 0.9 ha of forest floor annually and, in eating between 7 and 9000 kg of fresh vegetation, produces almost 900 kg of nitrogen-rich dung (along with over 2000 litres of potent urine!). This can have a significant, local impact on vegetation growth and their prefer-

ential browsing of willow means that alder is left relatively untouched. This is good for a wetwood ecosystem since alder has nitrogen-fixing root nodules, which contribute to the productivity of the soil. The intractability of wet woodlands is no reason to dismiss them as worthless. On the contrary, their richness and fascination should see their restoration given priority in the wider process of rewilding lowland areas in particular. Not only will this benefit wild nature but we will also see a direct benefit through improved water quality as natural systems take over the filtering process and offer protection from flash flooding. These are services provided for free when we have the courage to defer to natural processes and allow wet woods to find their own boundaries.We just need to be intelligent about where we place our homes and businesses, and imaginative enough to see wet woods as storehouses of potential, rather than inaccessible wastes. We need places where our imaginations can roam even if our feet canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t.

Crane chorus Create the right habitat for cranes, and people in Britain may once again have the chance to experience one of the greatest avian spectacles in Europe - crane courtship and display.

Eurasian crane at sunset This wetland icon is also a massive visitor attraction - 150,000 people attend the annual ‘Crane Festival’ at Sweden’s Hornborga Lake.

Northern damselfly What’s good for cranes is generally good for other species too. In a landscape where most ponds have been drained, and lowland wetlands are under constant threat of development, bog woodland is a refuge for many species of damsel and dragonflies.

Male goldeneye In recent decades the rasping call of the male goldeneye has become a familiar spring sound in Highland lochs, especially in the west of the Cairngorms National Park.

Female goldeneye In the absence of naturally excavated nest holes, goldeneye have become routine users of artificial boxes with the female being the sole incubator.

Pine marten and goldeneye box Boxes good enough for a goldeneye family are also of interest to prospecting pine martens. These super-size stoats have learned that not only do these boxes provide an ideal den, but they often contain a tasty meal.

Red-throated diver Perhaps the most spine-tingling sound of a spring highland dawn is the haunting call of the red-throated diver. While Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s breeding population prefers upland lochans, elsewhere in Europe these shy birds prosper from the security offered by small lakes secluded by forest.

Whooper swan Much shier than their more common relative, the mute swan, whoopers that travel to Scotland from their Icelandic breeding grounds, value the security provided by extensive wetlands and large lochs.

Wild water The Allt Ruadh carves its way through the dense forest carrying autumn leaves in a swirling eddy. Its journey from the high hills meanders briefly between pines and birches before entering the River Feshie, en-route to the Spey. Siskin A male siskin takes momentary advantage of a shallow forest pool - a welcome break from its diet of dry seeds.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;

EDGE

â&#x20AC;?

Cease being intimidated by the argument that a right action is impossible because it does not yield maximum profits or that a wrong action is to be condoned because it pays. Aldo Leopold

Along the Atlantic coast of Scotland, where the sea has worried the land ragged and forces itself into countless seaweed-strewn bays and steep-sided inlets, where rain clouds crossing the ocean are snagged by rough mountains and shed their loads, there is a special type of woodland that remains largely unknown to most people: Atlantic oak forest. It too is part of the original wildwood and in spite of a long, familiar history of neglect and abuse, embodies its spirit just as powerfully.

It is also justifiably characterised as temperate rainforest. It does, after all, receive up to 2 metres of rainfall a year and that, combined with a clement maritime climate and relative freedom from air pollution, provides ideal conditions for the ferns, mosses, liverworts and lichens that festoon these humid forests. Sometimes the wood starts just above the shore, the trees finding somewhere to root amongst the tumble of boulders on the lower slopes. Everything here is softened: the light by rain clouds; the impact of a raindrop after it has been passed from leaf to leaf on its way to the spongy woodland floor; the sound of our foot falls (nothing here is dry and crisp); even the wood warbler seems to sing a little louder to counter the deadening effect of moss coating otherwise resonant stone and wood.

The small hills these scattered woods ascend before petering out into rough pasture are themselves modest; the Atlantic oak forests do little to attract attention but they deserve scrutiny and appreciation. This is after all, in worldwide terms, a rare habitat, found only in a few places in western Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany and Galicia. Scottish woods, dominated by sessile oak, are home to over 500 species of plants, animals and fungi, three dozen of which are priority species for conservationists. The chequered skipper butterfly, for example, is now restricted in Britain to a small area of the western Highlands around Fort William where at the right time of year it can be found in damp meadows associated with the Atlantic oakwoods. Pine martens den in amongst boulder falls, and, for much of the year find enough to eat in the woodland, usually in the shape of voles, beetles, small birds and when things get lean in the winter, even earthworms. Badgers too make a living and shoreline tree roots offer otters a suitable refuge. In the past many of these forests had a commercial value in the form of coppice, their harvest used in charcoal production. But as demand declined, so the woods were abandoned to sheep and deer, becoming moribund in the process. Later, before it made a fundamental, pro-conservation shift in its strategy, the Forestry Commission actually under-planted some of these native woods with Sitka

spruce that eventually crowded out the oaks and the associated flora. In these more enlightened times, alien conifers and shrubs (especially Rhododendron) are being removed to let the light back in and livestock is being excluded to give natural regeneration a chance. Crucially, efforts are being made to establish corridors of habitat between these fragmented forests to allow a through-flow of genes; restoration is achieved not by conserving one wood at a time but rather by working on a landscape scale - something that is more practical where landowners share a common vision and ethos. The old ethos: leave the land in better heart than you received it in. Away from the Atlantic edge there is another type of even more obscure woodland, one that bears little resemblance to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;a forestâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even have the advantage of a romantic name: sub-alpine scrub. In comparable mountainous areas in Norway, zones of birch then willow appear above the tree line defined by Scots pines. Stunted Scots pine, juniper and heather feature in these zones too. In Scotland though, this distinctive, once widespread habitat has almost entirely disappeared, reduced to a few shreds in high ravines and on cliffs inaccessible to hungry mouths. Where it occurs in Norway, sub-alpine scrub hosts species like bluethroat, brambling, redwing, and wil-

low grouse. Not only do we lack the extensive stands that may entice more of these birds to nest (with the exception of the willow grouse of which our native red grouse is a sub-species) but where it does occur, the diversity of plants and animals associated with it, is comparatively poor. Places with a history of burning on the lower slopes - even if it happened many centuries ago - remain leached of their nutrients and impoverished today. The capacity of upland scrub to regenerate without help is hobbled, especially if sheep continue to gnaw away every attempt at recolonisation. The removal of grazers - or simply excluding them with fences - can allow sub-alpine and alpine scrub to re-establish, but there are opponents to both approaches. Crucially though, successful regeneration may be contingent on more subtle factors than hungry herbivores - not least the formation of good mycorrhizal associations. Sometimes birch scrub, for example, will gain a foothold but does not thrive as it should. This is especially a problem in places where heather dominates or where there are no old stumps or roots that would provide the source of mycorrhizal infection needed by saplings to access soil nutrients more effectively. Sites for restoration, then, need to be chosen with care, and thought given to their potential for future expansion to create a network of upland woodland.

Atlantic oakwood In these ancient woodlands, it seems that almost every surface has a moss or lichen, fern or liverwort growing from it; a luxuriant green mantle that is present in all seasons but which is especially impressive in late winter when other woods look at their most weary.

Fences in the uplands, however, are bad news for a struggling black grouse population, so in some locations, such as Creag Meagaidh, land managers have opted to minimise deer numbers as a way to re-establish the scrub zone. Research suggests that in areas with a lot of unmarked deer fencing, about a third of black grouse deaths can be attributed to collisions with fences. This bird inhabits the woodland edge, feeding on heather shoots and blaeberry where light levels are higher and enjoying denser parts of the forest to nest and seek cover from predators.They fly fast but are not especially nimble so a lot of money has been spent in removing fences where they are thought to harm local populations. As ever, fences are just one of a portfolio of problems that have seen black grouse numbers decline across most of Europe for more than a century now. Cold, wet weather in June when chicks are hungry for invertebrates, predation by foxes and crows, harassment by birds of prey and loss of habitat may be tolerable in a resilient population, but when they are already on the back foot, active management is needed to stack the odds back in their favour.

Badger Badgers often den in deep woodland but their nighttime forays take them beyond the edge of the forest into pasture to hunt for earthworms.

The good news is that black grouse can and do respond to sympathetic management - and quickly too. Over a six-year period in the 1990s, the number of males in Abernethy Forest grew four-fold after deer numbers were reduced, fences were removed and their food supply im-

proved. The managers of the Mar Lodge Estate on Deeside have had similar positive outcomes. As anyone who has sat in a hide stiff with frost to watch a black grouse lek in the gloom before dawn will acknowledge, this is an investment in ourselves as well as the birds. It is not only black grouse that thrive on the woodland edge. These transition zones, resisting definition as one habitat or another, greatly increase diversity of food and cover compared to deep forest or open countryside, and in doing so offering opportunities to species such as tree pipits, cuckoos, tawny owls and badgers. The best forests then, are not packed with trees; they are mosaics of glade and thicket, light and shade, dampness and dry. Edges propagate variety and opportunity. They cannot be defined by fenceline.They are diffuse spaces between forest and field, hotbeds of life, where insurrections against the suppression of wildness are spawned; where brambles send shoots on reconnaissance missions into adjacent fields; where goshawks hungrily eye unsuspecting prey from the dark canopy. A woodland, in its truest sense, is a soft edged thing. And when we put a value on a wood, the length of its edges is often a better measure than the volume of its timber.

Rothiemurchus and Invereshie, Cairngorms National Park Where open moor grades into woodland and then back again, species diversity increases compared to that of either habitat in isolation. Roe deer doe Preferring the cover afforded by dense woodland, roe deer nevertheless venture to its edges to find the lusher vegetation that grows in open glades and pastures.

Cuckoo Female cuckoos take advantage of tall trees from which to survey their territories, but it is amongst the low lying heather and grassy tussocks where their primary host, the meadow pipit, nests.

Female black grouse Very much an edge species, black grouse prefer a mosaic of open moor, wet pasture and adjacent forest to satisfy their feeding and nesting needs. Here the female, or â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;greyhenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, arrives on a lek site, prompting an explosion of activity as the males attempt to out-display each other. She wanders calmly around each combative pair and may choose one male, or simply fly off again.

Male black grouse Given extensive habitat, black grouse are able to recover their numbers quite quickly as has been demonstrated at several sites where sympathetic management is in place. Black grouse lekking on a still spring dawn is one of the quintessential sounds of the wildwood.

Bog woodland at dawn Perfect black grouse habitat - a mosaic of bog, open glades and forest. With lots of edge.

Deep freeze Birch woodland surrounding a deep frozen lochan with a full complement of transitional carr and scrub.

“

ICONS

”

Plant trees. They give us two of the most crucial elements for our survival: oxygen and books. A Whitney Brown

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Rare, vulnerable and now treasured Red squirrels are most at home in the old boreal forest where a variety of food from seeds to shoots and nestlings to toadstools sustains them through the year. Yet they survive too on the seed crops of spruce and pine plantations, a habitat in which their chief rival for food, the grey squirrel, cannot thrive.

Recent decades have seen conservationists shift focus away from individual species towards a more holistic, habitat-based approach with benefits for many species besides the target one. But what excites people about the forests - and gets their chequebooks out when another appeal comes around - is not mycorrhizza or blaeberry bushes, not the ants or voles, but the big, fierce or cute animals: red squirrels and pine martens, capercaillies, crested tits, red deer and wildcats, golden eagles and ospreys. With the best will in the world, an ecologically diverse wood that lacks the key â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;iconicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; species, lacks the power to inspire. These animals are ecosystem ambassadors and as such the fate of the forest is inextricably tied in with their own. While in nature all animals may be equal in importance, in popular perceptions, some are more equal than others. If we were to single out a species whose recent history and fate seems bound to that of our native woodlands, it would surely be the red squirrel. It too tells a story of hardship and recovery, retreat in the face of an alien invasion, disease and marginalisation. By the 18th century, thanks largely to deforestation, there were very few red squirrels left in lowland Scotland (and they were heading for extinction in the Highlands too), so some animals from England were released, initially at Dalkeith, Midlothian, in 1772. Newly established conifer plantations provided just the right conditions for these

pioneers to go forth and multiply - which they did with spectacular success as the area of plantations increased. So much so that by the early 20th century the animal was considered a pest (owing to its penchant for bark-stripping) and between 1913 and 1933 the Highland Squirrel Club bagged more than 82,000 of the sharp-toothed rodents. The (now incomprehensible) UK introduction and spread of North American grey squirrels at 30 sites between 1876 and 1929, ensured a rapid retreat of red squirrels from mixed woodland (where they are unable to compete effectively with greys) to pine forests and conifer plantations. Red squirrels are lighter and more nimble than greys so can reach the seed-bearing cones at the end of branches inaccessible to their more hefty ground-feeding cousins. Out-competed in many areas, red squirrels have become marginalized and are now under further threat from squirrel pox, which grey squirrels transmit but are immune to. Some areas remain clear of grey squirrels but we need to be alert to the possibility that well-intentioned planting schemes to connect fragmented woodlands may unwittingly assist the spread of grey squirrels into red squirrel strongholds. While the red squirrel is on the way down, one of the few predators that can catch it is on the way up - although the

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two events are largely unrelated. The pine marten took a severe beating during the heyday of ‘vermin control’ on sporting estates but is now fully protected and enjoying the food and cover provided by industrial forests, particularly in the north, west and central Highlands. The pine marten is an arch opportunist, quick to recognise a regular source of food and to adapt its own behaviour to reflect the risk of obtaining it. More than a few venture into the gardens of benevolent householders where they can find jam and nuts and a measure of toleration. Indeed, pine martens are an attraction at an increasing number of bed and breakfast houses throughout the Highlands and marten watching has become an exciting part of many wildlife holidays. Not everyone looks kindly on this apricot-fronted weasel, though. The pine marten exemplifies a problem that will increasingly trouble conservationists: how to balance recovering predator numbers against the decline in many prey species, especially when both are protected. There is a political dimension to this too: it does not look good for organisations that have lobbied for decades for proper protection for once endangered predators, now to endorse their culling, even if it is to assist endangered prey. However, when pine martens have a major impact on the breeding success of capercaillie (in a study in Abernethy

Pine marten at den Martens are active mainly at night but when they have access to a regular food supply especially if it includes raisins, jam and cake - will show themselves during daylight hours.

forest, eggs from almost half of the video-monitored nests were taken by martens) tough choices will have to be made if diversity remains the key objective. It is not just in Scotland that the capercaillie is declining; the same is happening across much of its range - with or without pine martens’ influence. Although capercaillie can survive in older industrial forests with an understorey of heather and blaeberry, they do best in the wild, unordered tangle of old boreal woodland - the sort that is increasingly rare. Indeed, most lowland populations of capercaillie have disappeared or are in terminal decline. The capercaillie has been extinct in Scotland before and today’s birds can trace their lineage to Swedish ancestors that were introduced in 1837 by Lord Breadalbane on his Taymouth estate in Perthshire. So now we have to ask a hard question. Is it possible, perhaps, that here on the outer fringes of its range, the capercaillie simply cannot get a firm enough foothold without intensive management? That the resources invested in it could be better deployed in habitat restoration to benefit a whole range of animals and plants? Rewilding landscapes offers the best possibility to prevent similar declines turning into extinctions - and given nature conservation’s relatively low funding priority, what resources are available, need to be spent to achieve maxi-

mum benefit. Is it really feasible to go on culling foxes and crows (or indeed pushing for pine marten control) indefinitely? Is such small-scale tinkering really the best use of our time, money and talent? The remnants of Scotland’s old pine forests are now subject to efforts to expand and connect them and this, along with predator control and redirecting mountain bikers and walkers away from sensitive areas, offers the best hope for this sedentary woodland grouse - as well as benefiting many other creatures. While some game managers dispute the actual risk posed to capercaillie by deer fencing, it is being dismantled in many places in Deeside and Speyside, removing one more obstacle to the bird’s recovery. A major factor in breeding success however - kind weather in spring and early summer - remains beyond our control and the bird’s future in Scotland is uncertain. Even more wedded to old boreal woodland, in Scotland at least, is the crested tit. They spend much of their time feeding in the canopy, trilling to one another. But in some places they have learned to come to nut feeders in the forest, giving visitors the chance to get a good look at this charismatic little bird. It’s feisty too and vigorously drives away bigger relatives. The tit’s reliance on old natural forest stems in part from a requirement for well-rotted, standing pines (at least 20 cm in diameter) in which

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Male capercaillie in late winter blizzard It is not only habitat loss and predation that make life hard for the capercaillie; cold wet springs increase chick mortality especially if there are fewer invertebrates for them to feed on.

Kamikaze caper! While most individuals are very shy, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;rogueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; birds appear every so often that are actively aggressive towards anything - people, dogs, horses or Landrovers - that comes into their territory. No one really knows why these testosterone-fuelled males behave this way, but when one flies towards you at head height, it is time to retreat.

the female can excavate a nest cavity - typically where a branch has broken off the tree. Yet standing deadwood is rare in managed woodlands, especially if it is viewed as a hazard, making competition for the few available nest sites intense. Nevertheless, the bird has shown itself willing to adapt to nest boxes - so long as they are stuffed with dead pine debris - the instinct to excavate has to be satisfied. Boxes may also afford more protection for chicks from hunting pine martens than a natural, pulpy cavity.

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More than any other pinewood species, the crested tit demonstrates the need for ‘joined up woodland’. It is not a great traveller (indeed, the birds in Scotland are isolated enough from their continental relatives to be classed as a subspecies) and discontinuous forest cover inhibits their spread even locally. Deeside, for example, has plenty of suitable habitat yet the bird has failed to colonise from its stronghold just over the hills in Speyside. Dispersal is not a problem for the Scottish wildcat - young males in particular are nomadic - and during the summer months at least, can live away from woodland. Instead, concerns focus on hybridisation with feral cats. The individual which defines ‘a wildcat’ in Scotland was collected in 1907 so it is possible that even it had some feral cat genes. Nevertheless, many biologists are concerned that continued cross-breeding with feral cats will diminish ‘true’ wildcat

characteristics; the two are separate subspecies but can nevertheless pair to produce fertile young. Given the intense historical persecution the wildcat has experienced (and as recently as 25 years ago, over 270 were killed on 40 Scottish sporting estates in a single year) it is not surprising that this rare native is so reclusive. It is understandable too how its supporters see in the Scottish wildcat, characteristics that embody the national spirit: ferocity, independence, tenacity and ruggedness. No terrestrial predator in the UK can inspire us in quite the same way - or is as endangered; some estimates put the number of genetically pure wildcats in Scotland as low as 400. So now, a three-quarters-of-a-million pound scheme to trap and neuter the estimated 100,000 feral cats living in about 7,000 square miles of wildcat territory is underway in a bid to end cross-breeding and begin to re-build the population. This will be followed up over time by genetic profiling to determine the success of the scheme. Genetic purity is also a concern in the Scottish red deer population. Sika deer, an introduction from Japan during Victorian times, sire fertile calves when young stags disperse into red deer habitat and encounter unguarded hinds. They are also at home in dense plantations, quickly retreating deeper into the forest when disturbed, making

it hard to stalk them. Excepting isolated island populations, it is conceivable that there may be no pure red deer in Scotland within 50 years. Over many years, Scottish red deer have adapted to a mean life on the hill with the average weight of stags and hinds being much below that of their continental, forestdwelling cousins. Attempts to increase the size of our own deer by injecting some European blood into the herd have tended to fail simply because the hill environment can’t sustain larger animals; the forest offers a more benign, productive place to live. If we want bigger deer we need to provide them with a better home - and that means more wild forest, perhaps even with the frisson of excitement provided by some large predators to keep the deer on their toes and the forest in good heart. It happens elsewhere in Europe and it can happen here too. Letting deer into woodland seems anathema to regeneration and the experience on the National Nature Reserve at Creag Meagaidh suggests that deer numbers need to be reduced to about one for every 19 hectares to allow regeneration of woodland without fencing - far fewer than many game managers find acceptable. Yet expensive fencing creates its own problems - for low flying woodland grouse and the artificially high density of seedlings that results when grazers are excluded. Moreover, a deer fence

hugely compromises the sense of wildness, something that can still be felt in many continental forests where large predators hunt large, healthy deer - with enough left over for human hunters too. In Scotland’s old pinewoods then, there is a concentration of fascinating, emblematic species that elsewhere in their range are scattered between many different habitats. The osprey, a fine example of nature’s resilience, more often than not chose pine trees in which to nest as it re-colonised Scotland during the last 50 years. Here they fish the dark lochs sunk between still forests, breaking the reflected barcodes of straight pine trunks as they plunge in, feet first after their prey.Yet in other parts of the world they nest on waterside utility poles with the mumble of traffic in the background. And while golden eagle nests in trees are quite uncommon in Scotland, the sight of an eagle perched in an isolated pine snag, watching for the movement of a mountain hare or red grouse, is a moment to savour. Conserving, expanding and nurturing our pinewoods, making them vital once more, offers the best future for those species we look upon as icons and without whose presence, our lives would be diminished in so many ways. Just ask any child enchanted by a red squirrel.

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Deer fence protecting pines Though effective at protecting woodland, deer fences are unsightly, expensive, and claim the lives of low-flying woodland grouse that collide with them. Many are now being removed - also at considerable cost. Red deer stag in pine forest Without fences, deer numbers have to be kept at very low levels to allow forest regeneration. With no natural predation, that can result in a lot of work, and heartache, for stalkers. Whilst fencing (or not) might be an ongoing discussion, some biologists fear for the genetic purity of Scotlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most iconic mammal. Where red deer share their range with the introduced sika, hybridisation is likely to occur. In time it is possible that only island populations of red deer - such as those on Rum - will remain genetically â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

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Crested tit in evening light This feisty pinewood specialist is just as happy to scavenge scraps of meat off a carcass, as it is to pick insects out of the forest canopy. Its distinctive trill is a defining sound of the old pinewoods.

Highland tiger A profound mistrust of people has helped the wildcat to cling on in spite of centuries of trapping, shooting and poisoning. Now, perhaps ironically in a country of cat lovers, the greatest threat comes from interbreeding with un-neutered domestic cats.

Loch Insh in deep winter, Cairngorms National Park Along with the golden eagle, we perhaps tend to think of the osprey as the bird that defines the Scottish Highlands more than any other. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not just the bird and its inspiring story of recovery, but the wild places where it lives.

Osprey preening Such is the public interest in ospreys today that a number have become national celebrities, their annual return from their African wintering grounds being covered by the press, and the trials and tribulations of their lives followed on the internet.

Osprey fishing Few spectacles match that of an osprey splashing down to catch a trout just metres away. The recovery of this majestic fish hunter - in no small way aided by the dedication of committed people - hints at what is possible, given the will.

Slavonian grebe at dawn In a few secluded tree-lined Highland lochs, this rare, secretive and mindblowingly colourful waterbird shares the summer with ospreys, goldeneye and red-throated divers - all icons of Caledonia.

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CATHEDRAL

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The forest talks a lot, I like to listen to what it says. Shane, Cedar House School, Cumbria

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A forest is many things. For some people it is a workplace, a resource, it provides cover for game. For others it is an obstacle to development, a hindrance to cultivation, under-utilised space. But for many more, a forest is a place of sanctuary, of peace and fascination; an antidote to the hubris of contemporary urban life. In a forest, our view is restricted; there is no horizon with which to gauge distance and scale. Forests therefore encourage introspection; they are places to see ourselves in perspective and perhaps even to set our lives in order.They are needed as a foil to ‘progress’ and ‘development’, as reference points where we can watch nature in action and compare our own achievements. While the economic worth of a forest may be quantifiable, it would be a mistake to dismiss these intangible aspects simply because a price can’t be put on them. We are, surely, more than mere consumers of ecosystem services and accepting that, the forest deserves to be recognised as a vital contributor to our social capital and personal well-being. The old pine forests in particular offer refuge to people as much as the animals that find a home in them and in nurturing them, we are taking care of ourselves too.

Winter reflections, Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin, Glen Affric.

To the uninitiated, disinterested or disenchanted, the forest may offer little in the way of distraction; alongside the cheap tricks of modern life it’s just boring. The trouble is

that going into a forest, especially in spring time, can be a bit like going to a party where everyone is clearly having a great time but because you don’t know anyone and everyone is speaking a foreign language, you feel excluded. What it takes is a translator who knows the names and understands the community. The Forestry Commission has, through its Forest Schools programme, made woodland accessible and interesting to many people, and in economically deprived areas such as Drumchapel on the north side of Glasgow, appreciation of local woodland has grown. School children learn woodcraft and den building, how to whittle and make dream catchers from willow whips. The neighbouring woodland is now more than just somewhere to hide; it is a place to feel at peace in, perhaps even to imagine other wilder forests, far away. We can derive a sense of pride knowing that we have Arctic summits and remote islands in Scotland, even though most people will never visit them, any more than they will see a wildcat or pine marten. It’s just reassuring to know they are there, the way we feel reassured that polar bears still roam the Arctic, for a bit longer at least. We should also look forward, one day, to having woodlands that satisfy the yearning for wilderness that many people feel, places where we are accountable only to ourselves.

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There is a steadily growing body of evidence to support something we instinctively know to be the case; that being out in green space is good for us - physically as well as emotionally. Forests are also the perfect venue for creativity - whether it is children making dens and forts, or adults taking photographs - as well as cycling, running, horse riding or just walking. Compared to the synthetic experience offered by a gym or theme park, the forest is vibrant and unpredictable, testing and real. And free.

Sunrise pine There are few places on our crowded island that can offer true silence and solitude. The remnants of the pine forest are not only islands of ecological wealth, but also storehouses for our own well-being.

Forests are also increasingly valued as outdoor classrooms. Following the Norwegian naturbarnehage model, a number of nature nurseries have opened in Scotland in which the children spend much of the day outside in woodland. Foundation learning - about colours and counting, shapes and sizes - is done just as effectively in a natural setting as indoors, with the added advantage of a physical dimension. Children who go to nature nurseries are often more physically coordinated and confident by the time they arrive at primary school than their more sedentary peers who may not have had the chance to balance on logs, climb trees or pull themselves up a bank on a knotted rope. And in the absence of toys, competition between children diminishes as they learn to imagine and improvise with things they find in the forest. The wilder the wood, the more fascination it holds.This has got to be good for everyone.

Scotland has one of the smallest areas of continuous native woodland in Europe and we are all the poorer for it. Sombre industrial plantations of non-native conifers are no substitute and offer little compared to a natural woodland with a herb layer, and glades and trees of different ages. Put the wild heart back into our woodlands and we will reap a rich harvest for generations to come.

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Loch an Eilein, Cairngorms National Park Even heavily visited areas such as Rothiemurchus in the Cairngorms have their quiet corners, so long as you are prepared to get up early and walk a little.

Fun in the forest Woodlands are a natural arena for creative play, for the imagination to run wild and for curious young minds to start learning about how the natural world works. The forest is also an outdoor gym, which trains both body and soul.

From dawn to dusk Few of us have the time to sit in the one spot and watch the light change over the course of a day. From the monochromatic tones of a frigid dawn to the dancing shadows of a winter sunset, Caledonia lives by natural time.

Mute swans at dawn Spending time in nature, feeling its restorative influence, leads many people towards a deeper concern for the places they live in; in acquiring a personal stake in wild nature, they are more likely to raise their voice for its support.

Ancient woodland, Inshriach Although to some this old forest may seem chaotic, disorderly, untidy even, its component parts are in ecological accord. Yet beyond the science and ecology, this forest is of benefit to us, as a key part of our Natural Health Service.

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CHOICES

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Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. Margaret Mead

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When Foot and Mouth disease swept through British flocks and herds in 2001, a modern tragedy unfolded as already precarious livelihoods disappeared overnight, and long established pedigree lines were brought to an abrupt halt, all against the sickening backdrop of funeral pyres burning deep in to the night. Yet there was another dimension of this epidemic that brought into sharp focus an attitude that should concern advocates of forest restoration: the widespread fear of scrub invasion. Without millions of teeth keeping scrub in check, there was serious concern that the open nature of the upland landscape would be compromised, even ruined, as natural vegetation grew ‘out of control’, making tourist traps look ‘untidy’ and ‘neglected’. Most visitors to Highland Scotland comment on the view uninterrupted by trees, and assume this to be the natural state of affairs. In truth though, much of upland Scotland is a barren, wet biological desert. Rather than lamenting the emergence of scrub - the forerunner of natural woodland - the loss of the view should be seen as the first stage in re-establishing a rich and vastly more varied natural landscape, one that is so far buried in our collective memory as to be almost forgotten. Assynt, northwest Highlands A spectacular but in many ways, barren landscape. In its natural state, most of the lower lying areas here would be forested. Better for wildlife perhaps but a challenge to the ‘view’ expected by visitors.

This need not, should not, be a landscape that denies people the possibility of making a living from it. An economic

stake in, and reliance on, a productive natural environment is the surest way to ensure long-term commitment to the land. Tourism, in some places, can be one contributor to this economy, but is fickle. And while extensive livestock production - perhaps where animals graze in wooded pastures - may be uneconomic, central funding designed to promote biodiversity can be usefully directed toward encouraging the practice. It is unlikely that any one activity alone - forestry, hunting, livestock rearing, tourism or cottage industry - can sustain many families but the right combination in the right setting offers the best possibility of stemming rural depopulation, of giving people a stake in a wilder landscape. We have seen many regeneration schemes revitalise tired city centres at huge expense, now it is time to do the same for our empty glens. If there needs to be a shift in attitude towards ‘the view’, an even bigger one is called for if we are to see the return of large carnivores to our expanding wild woodlands. And given the active persecution of red kites and calls for a halt to further sea eagle releases, it may be a hard sell. Interestingly, work commissioned by WWF a number of years ago indicated that in European countries where wolves, bears and lynx had never been extirpated, public attitudes towards these predators was more pragmatic and relaxed than in countries where they had long since

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disappeared. This isn’t surprising; once the experience of living with predators in the landscape is lost, it is natural to inflate the risk they pose, to demonise them and to forget the strategies for living alongside them. And this is never more the case than in Britain where our long industrial history and early mass urbanisation means that the largest part of the population has no familial links with the land or memory of making a living from it. If large predators, as well as beavers and cranes, are to take their former place, there needs to be a clear economic as well as ecological case made. Scotland annually earns about £127 million from wildlife tourism, but this figure can only grow with some more heavyweight attractions.

Frosted birches, Glen Affric Still regarded by many as an invasive ‘weed’, birches are pioneers of the wildwood. Mature birch forest is a biological powerhouse, a carbon store, a source of fuel, a larder, and a natural workout zone.

It is easy to dismiss species reintroductions (more correctly, re-establishments since the animals are extinct natives) as nostalgic tampering; to accuse supporters of superimposing animals from the past onto a modern landscape, and of threatening peoples’ livelihoods in the process.Yet in other parts of Europe, local economies are based around the very presence of these animals. In Finland and Sweden, for example, bear watching brings revenues into remote regions, while sea eagles and orcas do a similar job in Norway.The vital ingredient is imagination; a willingness to consider the animal as a potential asset in a new business model, rather than just a threat to the old way of doing things. The Harz National Park in Germany

saw a steady growth in visitor numbers after lynx were re-established there, not because there was much chance of seeing one of these very private cats, but because of the boost to the image of the area the lynx gave. Although rather similar in appearance to some of the more interesting industrial forests in Scotland, the Harz was perceived as somewhere wild enough to provide a home for lynx. Saying that Scotland’s forests are wild enough to host foxes and pine martens doesn’t give them quite the same kudos. Ultimately, all of these schemes have to take place in a wilder landscape where we let go of our instinct to micro-manage and allow natural processes a lot more leeway. Perhaps a shift in economic realities may bring this about by default. Allowing nature to self-manage (and before we began to intervene it had a long track record of doing so) suddenly becomes much more appealing when budgets are shrunk. At the start of this book, I described how in the early post-glacial period climatic fluctuation had a much greater impact on forest cover than people, and that there is little doubt that there will be another glacial lock down at some stage in the future. Perhaps a warming climate will mean that Scotland becomes as dry as Nevada and the natural vegetation we are familiar with will disappear. But nobody knows for sure, if or when. And neither scenario can be used as an excuse to do nothing.

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People in industrialised nations, by and large, remain in denial about the unbreakable link between a healthy biosphere and personal prosperity and well-being. If there is crop failure at home, or we have exhausted our domestic stocks of whitefish, we simply buy from the world market. There is little to connect consumption with its consequences in most people’s experience. We can even buy carbon credits from poorer countries to allow us to maintain our lifestyles. Conservation, for most of us, is less a matter of life and death than one of ethics. And the central question is this. Even if we believe the world is going to hell in a handcart, shouldn’t we, nevertheless, be putting a foot out to try to stop it? Can we live with knowing that we did nothing on our watch to make things better? Let’s put aside the arid language of accountancy when discussing the land and acknowledge that it is more than an asset with which to accumulate money. Let’s recall the fading ethos that shaped much of the current lowland landscape - the desire to leave the land in a better state than it was acquired; not simply to take as much profit as possible during the custodian’s lifetime.

Emblems of conflict or the foundation for recovery? Our instinct to micro-manage the land manifests in a range of species-specific initiatives, resulting in a disjointed landscape, which performs below its biological capability. Unavoidably, the role of deer in the upland landscape is fundamental to the future of the forest and all the species within it.

On a pragmatic level, and one that may have more popular resonance if climate change Cassandras are vindicated, is the role of trees as carbon sequestrators. To see a tree merely as a carbon store is a bit like regarding a whale simply as a source of oil. But if the case for expanding wild

forests has to be framed as a counter-carbon measure, so be it; they will fulfil their greater role regardless of the label and enrich our lives in ways we can still only imagine. There is a tendency today to look to the large conservation groups to enhance biodiversity and to take the lead in habitat management for the benefit of wildlife as well as people. They in turn look to us for financial support as well as to a raft of government schemes that allow them to advance an agenda not always in harmony with that of commercial landowners. Scotland’s complex mosaic of land ownership further hinders progress towards coherent, cross-boundary restoration programmes. But coherence there must be, and we can create it, whether we own a small garden or 20,000 hectares, when we share a belief in the value of wildness and manage our land accordingly. In the next chapter we will see examples of pioneering individuals whose vision, drive and in some cases self-sacrifice, is providing a window today on what the Scotland of tomorrow could be like. Be inspired - then act.

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Monitoring pine growth Nurturing a new forest need not be, should not be, at the expense of traditional employment. The traditional landowning ethic - to leave the land in a better state than you receive it - is a solid starting point towards a strong and shared vision for the future of Caledonia.

Alladale Wilderness Reserve, Sutherland With vision and drive, as well as the appropriate wherewithal, empty glens like this can be transformed into vibrant green places once more, with benefits to recolonising wildlife and people wishing to get a living from the land.

Caledonia! What a mark of progress it would be if we came to value landscapes like this as much as we do economic growth and that they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always come off second best when the chips are down.

Kingussie, Inverness-shire

the habitat’s carrying capacity. “We’ve also proven that long-term habitat restoration is not a choice between forest, deer and people; we need all three. The keepers here have an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise - that’s an essential ingredient in this process.”

We’ve also proven that long-term habitat restoration is not a choice between forest, deer and people: we need all three.

So what of the future? Thomas produces a map:The Glenfeshie Native Woodland Model, which profiles different soil types across the estate. It looks complicated.

GLENFESHIE ESTATE

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Thomas MacDonnell is a man on a mission to change not only a landscape but also a culture of indifference towards Scotland’s impoverished forest. But his mission is far from a naïve nosedive towards a romantic ideal. His plans are both considered and well researched. A native of Glenfeshie’s nearest village, Kincraig, Thomas is now the factor of this 20,000 hectare plot at the heart of the Cairngorms. The estate has gained a deserved reputation as one of Scotland’s most picturesque glens, but has courted its share of controversy, most notably in 2004 when it undertook an extensive cull of its deer population, in full glare of the media spotlight. Contrary to popular misconception however, the cull was not an indiscriminate slaughter, but the foundation for a road map that was sketched in Thomas’ early working life.

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In a family of farmers and keepers, it was perhaps inevitable that Thomas drifted into land management and worked for years as a fencing contractor. “I was putting up fences to satisfy the tradition of keeping deer and trees apart. It wasn’t until one winter when I found 60 dead deer lying up against ‘my’ fence that I realised this just wasn’t right.” Thomas can now reflect on how his perceptions have changed. “It was Dick Balharry who first forced me to challenge my own thinking,” he recalls. “He made me realise that by controlling deer densities to allow regeneration, more jobs can be created, not less as is often perceived.” With ten years of detailed records behind them, Glenfeshie has proven that woodland regeneration is possible in the presence of deer, but only at a level in keeping with

“The starting point of repairing something is to find out how it works,” he smiles, “and if I don’t know, I ask for input from others that do.” Glenfeshie’s plans include not only the expansion of forest cover, but the restoration of sub-montane and bog woodland, habitats that are an integral part of the forest ecosystem. Refreshingly, Glenfeshie’s objectives include the ‘underpinning of social and economic sustainability within the community.’ In other words, people.This forest doesn’t ignore, or attempt to exclude, people. So why take on such a long-term and expensive project like this? “It’s our duty,” says Thomas. “Most of the pines here are around 250 years old; in another 60 years or so, the majority could be dead. I don’t want to be the person who lets that happen. In 200 years, we want to see an ecosystem that works, one that produces more of every-

thing - from insects to salmon to deer.” Glenfeshie has the luxury of an owner who talks about ‘cathedral thinking’ and a 200-year plan. “He’s a breath of fresh air and is hungry to make a difference,” says Thomas. “He’s also a big polluter with huge business interests there’s no getting away from that. By doing what we’re doing at Glenfeshie, we can mitigate at least some of the impact. But it’s not cheap and it’s not quick.” It is fair to say that deer management is at the heart of Glenfeshie’s restoration plans and Thomas recognises that he’s never far away from touching that cultural raw nerve. “Look, we’re completely open about what we’re trying to achieve. In 2002, this estate held 40 deer per sq. km. In 2010, there is less than 1 per sq.km. To some that may seem like a radical reduction, but I’m happy to invite anyone to Glenfeshie to see for themselves the difference it has made. In the longer term, healthier deer will help sculpt a natural rich and varied woodland, very different from the monoculture of our existing commercial plantations”. www.glenfeshie-estate.com

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DUNDREGGAN ESTATE Glenmoriston, Inverness-shire

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If you’re interested in healthy deer, you have to be interested in a healthy forest.

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Alan Watson Featherstone’s approach to conservation has not always been in keeping with tradition, and the founder of the award-winning Trees for Life charity, has had to work long and hard to gain mainstream acceptance. But 20 years after the birth of Trees for Life in northern Scotland, his pioneering principles provide the bedrock for ecological thinking far beyond his own organisation. Closer to home,Trees for Life focuses its everyday efforts on a vision that is continually honed, but that retains the charity’s founding principle, that of restoring a wild forest - and the natural processes that nurture it - to a substantial area of the northwest Highlands. Although Trees for Life has been working in partnership with landowners for many years, Alan’s dream was always for the charity to have a piece of land it could call its own. When the stalking estate of Dundreggan, west of Inver-

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moriston, came on the market, that dream came true and offered Trees for Life the opportunity to set new standards in landscape-scale restoration. At 4,000 hectares Dundreggan is small compared to many Highland estates but it’s strategically placed within the charity’s target area and is surrounded by remnants of native woodland. Moreover, Dundreggan’s potential is underlined with the recent discovery of several nationally scarce insect species, rapidly establishing the estate’s reputation as a ‘lost world’ in the Highlands. In the longer term, Dundreggan offers the opportunity to establish a high-ground forest corridor from Glen Moriston across to Glen Affric, a Caledonian forest stronghold and the setting for much of Trees for Life’s work. Presently, Dundreggan has only 100 hectares of native

woodland and so like others, it’s a long-term project that will bring together the wide-ranging threads of ecological expertise that Trees for Life has developed. Anyone perusing their web site will quickly realise that this expertise is extensive and comprehensive. Without doubt however, Dundreggan is as much about cultural change as it is about physical change, and it wasn’t long before Trees for Life found itself having to justify a shift in land management techniques. “If you’re interested in healthy deer, you have to be interested in a healthy forest,” says Alan. “It’s not a question of deer versus trees; deer are an integral part of the forest and a healthy habitat will produce larger, healthier deer.” Alan has always steered Trees for Life away from being a campaigning organisation, preferring instead to lead by example. Dundreggan offers a model that will inspire and influence a new philosophy towards restoring Caledonia. “Historically, we’ve always been tempted to squeeze our landscape dry until it’s down to its minimum carrying capacity,” says Alan wearily, “but that’s a short term view and that model is already destroying ecosystems worldwide.” Alan pauses and stares out of his office window. “Our values at Trees for Life are perhaps different to those of a society built around unlimited economic growth, but a change in society’s values can’t be enforced, it has to

come through choice. Our job is to inspire that choice.” Dundreggan has a 50-year management plan, which will see many ambitious changes on the estate. Planting trees and controlling deer is one thing, but the return of extinct species is a whole different cultural obstacle, one that Trees for Life, perhaps uniquely amongst conservation bodies, has never shied away from. “A forest is not just about trees, it’s about a set of natural processes working in unison,” asserts Alan. “Without the full complement of species that helped nurture the forest originally, those processes will never reach their full potential.” Already a small herd of captive wild boar are snuffling and rooting their way through extensive bracken stands, opening up the forest floor for fresh tree growth, but the management plan also refers to the presence of beavers and even lynx. It would be easy for Trees for Life to follow a less tortuous route to their vision, but an unrelenting belief in a set of values that much of society has long forgotten, is what sets Alan Watson Featherstone - and others like him - apart from the mainstream. www.treesforlife.org.uk

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PITCASTLE & GLENLOCHAY ESTATES Strathtay, Perthshire

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There’s no future in being dependent on hand-outs, this estate has to be self-sustaining, it’s that simple.

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Struan Robertson is owner of Pitcastle Estate in Highland Perthshire. But this is more than just about having his name on the title deeds; this is his family’s home and his connection with the land is strong. Struan is no romantic however, and his plans for the estate are rooted firmly in sound business principles. Pitcastle at 600 hectares offers little for the ambitious restorationist so at the suggestion of his estate manager, Donnie Broad, himself a deep thinker about the relationship between people and the land, Struan bought neighbouring Glenlochay Estate in 2005. Upon initially viewing the 6,000 hectare hill ground, Struan quickly concluded,

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“Lovely but needs some trees!” Struan is a quiet unassuming man but with a confident demeanour born out of his many years in business. It is that business experience, along with his clear emotional attachment to Pitcastle, and now Glenlochay, that he now brings to bear on his estate management. The quest at Glenlochay is to plant 1 million native trees and to restore the bare hillsides to a vibrant forest rich in wildlife.Yet any notion that this is a benevolent ecological gesture, an idealistic hankering after a long-lost wilderness, is quickly dispelled. Struan wants to make money.

“Of course there are aesthetic considerations to what we’re doing, but in the long term, I need to find new ways of making money from a Scottish estate.There’s no future in being dependent on hand-outs; this estate has to be self-sustaining, it’s that simple.” Struan is in this for the long haul. Planting on this scale needs careful planning and he’s already spent £150,000 on Environmental Impact Assessments. These trees are for keeps; they’re not going to be harvested; this will be a truly wild forest. Similar thought and commitment is going into building the foundations for healthy wildlife populations, with the genes of stud stags purchased from a managed herd, already infiltrating his local deer. “We will eventually sell our stag stalking for £1000 a beast - they will be the biggest and the best, but that doesn’t happen by accident, you have to give them prime habitat.” Introducing park deer to open ground to improve the sport is nothing new, but Struan and his team are not looking at a quick fix that lasts just a few years, they’re taking on a ground-up approach to ensure the long term health of both their deer and that of a wide range of other species. The forest restoration at Glenlochay includes plans for larger native herbivores like elk and bison, but again Stru-

an’s rewilding objectives are founded on sound economic principles, which have sustainability at their core. “I don’t want to create a zoo; I want people to have a true wildlife experience, comparable with anywhere in the world, whether they’re carrying a rifle or a camera. To get there we need to restore the forest but the businessman in me demands that all of these steps make good business sense. Good habitat means good deer and other game. If there are ecological benefits, great but that’s not why I’m doing this - this is about ensuring long term sustainability.” Struan who is looking down the barrel at his mid-sixties and weary of endless business functions, is looking to retire at Pitcastle and to put in place a legacy that will serve not only his family, but also the loyal staff that work alongside him, staff like Donnie and head stalker Jimmy Barrie It’s a team effort. It’s an ambitious and exciting team effort. www.pitcastle.com

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THE CARRIFRAN WILDWOOD Moffat Hills, Dumfries And Galloway

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Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel. Aldo Leopold

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The Wildwood Group. It sounds like a bunch of mavericks intent on plundering all those who enter the dark forest; a band of modern-day Robin Hoods. In fact comparisons with the legendary outlaw are not entirely unwarranted; the Wildwood Group was originally founded to ‘give something back’. A casual walk in the Gameshope Valley in spring 1993 gave Philip Ashmole, a retired biologist living in Peebles, an idea. Reflecting on how badly degraded the Scottish Uplands had become over millennia, Philip conceived a scheme that would become one of the most dramatic ecological restoration projects the UK had ever seen.The

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Wildwood Group - a small group of volunteers from the Peebles area - was born and under the leadership of Philip and his wife Myrtle, has shown that given commitment, dedication and above all vision, almost anything is possible. Carrifran is a valley in the Moffat Hills, a range harshly referred to as a ‘wet desert’ by Frank Fraser Darling. Like many of its kind, Carrifran was bereft of any significant vegetation: bare and degraded. But in the early nineties The Wildwood Group started to change things. Philip and Myrtle are amongst a growing band of people who see and understand the wounds that have been inflicted on the Scottish landscape and feel compelled to ‘do some-

thing’. That ‘something’ kicked off with a conference they organised in 1993, which sowed the seed of an idea that would transform a whole valley, returning it to a rich and wild forest. It was nothing short of a vision to rebuild an entire ecosystem. Fast forward seven years and a monumental amount of effort and fundraising - far beyond the scope of what can be described here - finally yielded its reward. On 1st January 2000, Millennium Day, Carrifran was in the hands of local people who shared a vision for its restoration. And this is what sets this story apart. The purchase of Carrifran was achieved without the help of a millionaire benefactor and without any public funding; it started with an idea that was ambitious enough to infect thousands of people who donated their money and devoted their time to create something unique. Myrtle and Philip are humble people, quick to deflect any praise for what they have set in motion and it’s true, Carrifran has been a team effort. But without their early vision and ongoing commitment, there are few who believe Carrifran would have happened. “ Philip is a great communicator,” says Myrtle, fondly patting her husband’s head. “His enthusiasm is so infectious.” It was this enthusiasm that laid the foundations for nearly £1million being raised from scratch - much of it by way of private donations -

and 500,000 trees being planted to date. Today Carrifran is about much more than an embryo of a wild forest, in fact Carrifran is not particularly extensive at 650 hectares with around half of that already planted. Many of Carrifran’s supporters will never visit the site; they will never see the woodland they have paid for, and they will never witness the forest ecosystem functioning as it once did; as it should. These are people who, like Myrtle and Philip, want to ‘give something back’, to repair the damage of the past. As much as anything then, Carrifran signifies a shift in societal values, a changing mindset. Carrifran is an inspiring symbol of what can be achieved, given the will, by just a handful of people disseminating a very powerful message. The Carrifran Wildwood is owned by The Borders Forest Trust, a charity dedicated to developing ambitious habitat restoration and community woodland projects, but the Wildwood Group, that small bunch of pioneers that still includes Myrtle and Philip, continues to sculpt the destiny of this living forest; this wild forest; this people’s forest. www.carrifran.org.uk www.bordersforesttrust.org

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ALLDADALE WILDERNESS RESERVE Ardgay, Sutherland

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People don’t realise how knackered this land is.

Hugh Fullerton Smith has a glint in his eye; an edginess to his demeanour; an inferno burning in his head. Such traits belie a passion for conservation that is both rare and infectious. A native Kiwi with globe-trotting entries on his CV that include the building of a mobile abattoir for South Dakota’s Cheyenne River Sioux tribe, Hugh is, for the time being at least, settled in the Scottish Highlands and enjoying the challenges of being Director of The European Nature Trust (TENT). TENT is new on the conservation block, but whilst short on history, is anything but on ambition. With rewilding projects running in both Bulgaria and Romania, it’s easy to forget that the charity’s roots lie at Alladale Wilderness Reserve in the north-west Highlands. When owner Paul Lister bought Alladale Estate in 2003, it was hardly known beyond the immediate communities of Ardgay and Bonar Bridge. Paul changed all that with headline news of the

return of wolves and bears, a subject for which the media has an insatiable appetite. But Alladale was always about much more than the return of lost carnivores, and Hugh is anxious to demonstrate that. “What many people don’t realise is that Alladale is pioneering not only landscape-scale restoration over its 10,000 hectares, but also ways in which that can be financed and provide significant economic benefits to traditional sporting estates.” Alladale contains some of the oldest and most northerly fragments of pine forest in Scotland, but it was the riparian woodland that attracted initial activity. “Man’s impact here started along the river courses, depriving the river of shade, nutrients and flood controls; it made sense therefore to start repairing these first,” says Hugh.

In 2006, TENT ignited an ambitious programme of riparian restoration by donating £50,000 to the Kyle of Sutherland Fisheries Trust on the premise that the funds would be used as the backbone for co-funding. Willow and alder were planted along a 16km. stretch of the River Carron. Today the project involves ten neighbouring estates and is targeting 65km. of riverbank through leveraged funding. “There’s a long way to go,” says Hugh, “but we’ve already planted half a million trees. The idea is to improve the baseline vegetation, the food plants; these are the building blocks of a healthy forest.” Unsurprisingly, Alladale has come under the spotlight for its approach to deer management and Hugh is aware of the sensitivities surrounding this issue. “The fact is that we can’t have fences running everywhere and so we need to get deer numbers down. It’s taken a long time to get from 18 animals to around 7 per sq.km. Even at that we still need to fence, we’re not there yet.” Hugh is no fan of conservation politics and shuns what he perceives as unnecessary bureaucracy. “We’re trying to create a restoration toolbox here that can be rolled out across other areas. In a single generation we could get Alladale into a really healthy ecological condition, but we need to get on and do it, not sit around discussing objectives and targets. The time is now - there’s some fantastic

incentives for estate owners to do this stuff at almost zero cost and with increasing interest in carbon offsetting, the opportunities are unprecedented.” Already TENT has sold the carbon that much of its planting will sequest over the next 70 years. “It’s a win-win situation,” says Hugh, “big corporates are looking to offset their emissions and we’re giving them a science-based, environmentally and socially rewarding way of doing so. The profits go back into conservation and allow us to be more ambitious in our plans.” So what of Alladale 50 years from now? What will it look like? Will bears and wolves be running free? “My priority is to get the habitat repaired,” says Hugh, “people don’t realise how knackered this land is. It looks great but 200 hectares won’t support even five wild boar. We need to start from the bottom but in 50 years I would like to see people driving into Alladale through Amat Wood looking out on classic Caledonian Forest - rich and vibrant in life. I am lucky to have an extraordinarily gifted team whose roles have changed radically from deer stalkers to genuine and practical conservationists. My biggest ‘kick’ has been seeing Innes MacNeill and his crew take passionate ownership of meeting our goals. When I bow out, Alladale will be in very safe hands.” www.theeuropeannaturetrust.com

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REFERENCES Smout, T.C. (Ed.).(1993). Scotland Since Prehistory.Natural Change and Human Impact. Aberdeen. Scottish Cultural Press. Lambert, Robert. (Ed.) (1998). Species History in Scotland. Edinburgh. Scottish Cultural Press. Yalden, Derek. (1999). The History of British Mammals. London. T and A D Poyser Natural History. Corbert, G.B., and Harris, S. (Eds.). The Handbook of British Mammals (3rd Edition). Oxford. Blackwell Science. Environmental History Resources. Scottish Forest History. A Bibliography. http://www.eh-resources.org/bibliography/biblio_scot.html

Bird Study.The establishment of a population of Goldeneyes Bucephala clangula breeding in Scotland. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a912645617 University of California Davis. Moose (Alces alces) and Their Influence upon Terrestrial Ecology in the Copper River Watershed, Alaska. http://watershed.ucdavis.edu/Copper_river/background/data/Moose.pdf Forest Research. A Forest Habitat Network for the Atlantic oakwoods in Highland Region, Scotland. http://www.forestresearch.gov.uk/pdf/A_Forest_Habitat_Network_for_the_Atlantic_oakwoods_in_Highland_Region.pdf/$FILE/A_Forest_Habitat_Network_for_the_ Atlantic_oakwoods_in_Highland_Region.pdf

Game Conservancy Trust. Natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gain. How gamebird management has influenced wildlife conservation. http://www.gwct.org.uk/documents/natures_gain.pdf

Forestry Commission. Guidance note for staff in Scottish conservancies guidance note 11. http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/DeerFencingguidancenote11.pdf/$FILE/DeerFencingguidancenote11.pdf

Smout, T.C. (Ed.). (2003). People and Woods in Scotland: A history. Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press.

Journal of Natural History. Diet of pine martens Martes martes L. in west Scotland. http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20000615394.html

Forestry. Understanding the evolution of native pinewoods in Scotland will benefit their future management and conservation. http://forestry.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/5/535.abstract

Highland Birchwoods. Scottish Mountain Woods interpretive plan. http://www.highlandbirchwoods.co.uk/UserFiles/File/publications/Scrubbers-Bulletin/ Bulletin%206.pdf

Tooth and Claw. European lynx. http://www.toothandclaw.org.uk/

Scottish Natural Heritage. Scrub in the Scottish uplands. http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/review/083.pdf

Trees for Life. Wild boar. http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/species/wildboar.html

Bird Study. Nest selection, management and breeding success of Crested Tits Parus cristatus at Abernethy Forest, Strathspey. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a909088665

Trees for Life. Mycorrhizas. http://www.treesforlife.org.uk/forest/ecological/mycorrhizas.html Journal of Applied Ecology. An experimental study of the effects of predation on the breeding productivity of capercaillie and black grouse. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0021-8901.2004.00891.x/full The RSPB. The Predation of Wild Birds in the UK. A review of its conservation impact and management. http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/Predator%20Report_tcm9-177905.pdf Wolves and Humans. Protecting livestock against predators. http://www.wolvesandhumans.org/articles/protecting_livestock_from_large_carnivores.htm Conservation Biology. Raptors and Red Grouse: Conservation Conflicts and Management Solutions. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1523-1739.2000.99013.x/abstract Sussex Otters and Rivers Project. How to Create and Restore Wet Woodlands. http://www.sussexotters.org/pdf/2009/Creating%20Wet%20Woodlands.pdf Guardian. Scrubs up a treat. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2001/apr/11/guardiansocietysupplement4

Wildlife Biology. Capercaillie Tetrao urogallus nest loss and attendance at Abernethy Forest, Scotland. http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/nkv/wb/2009/00000015/00000003/art00009 Forestry. Nesting Habitat Selection by Crested Tits Parus cristatus in a Pine Plantation. http://forestry.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/2/147.short Scottish Natural Heritage. Wild living cats in Scotland. http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/research/23.pdf Scottish Natural Heritage. Scottish Wildcat Survey 2006 - 2008. http://www.snh.org.uk/pdfs/publications/commissioned_reports/360.pdf Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe. An investigation of public opinion about the three species of large carnivores in Slovakia. http://www.lcie.org/Docs/HD/Wechselberger_carnivores_slovak_hd.pdf Kora. Lynx and humans. http://www.kora.ch/en/proj/elois/online/speciesinf/lynx_and_humans/lynx_and_humans.htm

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PHOTOGRAPHIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although the images in this book were mostly captured in a fraction of a second, the majority are the result of many years of working with valued friends and colleagues. All these folk below (and many more besides) have contributed to CALEDONIA, and for that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m very grateful.

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Ailsa Villegas Alan & Sharon Cairns Alan Rothery Alan Watson Featherstone Andy Hughes Aulis Syvajarvi Bobby Innes Bridget Wijnberg Charlotte Kissack Chris Mahon Chris Powell Colin Leslie Craig Churchill Daniel Green

Danny Green David Clark David Kinnear Donnie Broad Florian Leo Florian Moellers Gay and Andy Christie Graham MacDonald Hugh Fullerton-Smith Ian Mason Innes McNeill Jack Hawkins Jani Maata John MacPherson

Jon Hodges Lars Gabrielsson Lassi Rautianen Liz Balharry Marcus Eldh Mark Sisson Mikael Nilsson Myrtle & Philip Ashmole Neil McInnes Neil Wakeling Ole Martin Dahle Paul Lister Paul Ramsay Peter Ferguson

Rolf Steinmann Ronnie MacLeod Rothiemurchus Estate Roy Dennis Ruari MacDonald Sam Cairns Scott Dixon Staffan Widstrand Struan Robertson Thomas MacDonnell Tommy Bryce Vince Jones

With special thanks to my parents Joan and Ken, my wife Amanda, the brilliant Emma Blyth and proof readers (as well as jolly fine friends) Mark Hamblin, David Hetherington and Gale Lee.

CALEDONIA is dedicated to Jim Gillies, a good man who loved the forest

Only a tiny fraction of Scotland’s original “Wildwood” remains and iconic species like the red squirrel, crested tit, pine marten and wildcat cling on to a precarious existence. While these and other exciting animals are found in a variety of habitats across Europe, many of them rely on the old pine forests of the Central Highlands, making these lonely and isolated remnants especially important. In words and pictures, Niall Benvie and Peter Cairns make a passionate plea for an expansion of Scotland’s natural forest cover, not based on some romantic notion of a wilderness long lost, but for sound economic, social and ecological reasons. CALEDONIA provides an account of the turbulent history of Scotland’s forest, charts our relationship with the Wildwood and the creatures living in it, and crucially, presents an inspiring vision for the future where everyone’s lives can be enriched in a healthier, more robust landscape.