The Geographer: Rewilding (Winter 2014)

The

Geographer Winter 2014 -15

The newsletter of the

Royal Scottish Geographical Society

The Landscape of Rewilding Making the lynx

In This Edition...

•M onbiot Goes Feral •G len Affric, Glenfeshie and Alladale • L iving With Bears and Beavers •M arine Rewilding •W ild Scotland, Wild Mongolia • L eo Houlding Scales the Heights •G eographers in WWI •R eader Offer: Dirty Teaching

“Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf.”

Aldo Leopold

plus other news, comments, books...

RSGS: helping to make the connections between people, places & the planet

The

Geographer

rewilding

R

ewilding is a term that is gaining traction publicly and politically. It seems to split into two camps. The first is concerned with people retaining a connection with nature. An increasing detachment from nature is seen as a threat to humanity, because physically we are part of nature and rely on it, and spiritually it enhances us in a very fundamental way.

We lose something vitally important if we lose that connection, and as the world’s population becomes ever more urbanised, this is surely a rising concern. The second camp strives to create more robust landscapes and ecosystems that can survive dints and natural hazards and some human pressure. But how do you go about rewilding land?

To begin with, what is a wild landscape? We can confuse ‘wild’ with ‘remote’. One of the remotest places I have visited recently is the very western end of the Alladale estate near Seana Bhràigh, one of the least accessible Munros in Scotland.

And there, a long way from any established road, I could see a dam from the 1950s hydro schemes, the mouth to a milelong tunnel under the nearest hill, mountain burns channelled into the hydro scheme, and a couple of landrover tracks.

It is almost as remote as you can get in the UK, but it is not wild. It reinforces the sense of a man-made (or perhaps maninfluenced) landscape, which is largely what we have in this country, in most part too small to be truly wild.

If you accept that rewilding is about recreating robust, complete ecosystems, then what’s most obviously lacking are those species that have been depleted to the point of near extinction, or literally removed from the landscape. In Scotland, these include dwarf willow, red squirrel, Scottish wildcat. More controversially, they include beavers, white-tailed eagles, red kites. Even more controversially, they include wolves, lynx, bear, bison. By removing them, we created an imbalance and lack of robustness in the ecosystem.

What place do these species have in a future Scotland? Which should we prioritise, which should we protect, and which might we consider bringing back? If rewilding is in part about respecting nature’s ability to find its own solutions, and if, for example, we do not want to reduce deer numbers ourselves, would bringing in apex predators help perform that function, and go some way to creating a ‘complete’ ecosystem? A wolf pack could help the habitat recover, both by reducing herbivore numbers and by disturbing their grazing patterns.

But could we see ourselves walking through a Scottish glen with the excitement, or fear, of knowing that there might be a wolf, or a bear, or a lynx watching us? At which point might we view that as an acceptable risk, or embrace it as a positive addition to our landscape? Can we ever foresee that day? And will we get anywhere near if we don’t at least experiment?

The future of our wild places depends on us retaining our connection to them, caring about them, valuing them, making them more robust. As bigger areas of contiguous land managed for wildlife make wildlife more robust, we need to take these reserves, these pockets and islands of nature, and make them as big as possible, to sustain populations of indigenous species. But what price are we prepared to pay? Limited public access? Heavy culls of deer to sustain low grazing levels? Are we patient enough to sit back and watch how nature responds? Or should we plant and manage and build the habitat we want to see? And do we see apex predators as a threat to safety or a necessary component of a natural system?

How would you choose to rewild?

Mike Robinson, Chief Executive RSGS, Lord John Murray House, 15-19 North Port, Perth, PH1 5LU tel: 01738 455050 email: enquiries@rsgs.org www.rsgs.org

Charity registered in Scotland no SC015599 The views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the RSGS. Cover image: Eurasian lynx. © Peter Cairns / northshots.com Masthead image: Lichens. © RSGS / Mike Robinson

Eurasian Lynx The superb photograph on our cover was taken by Peter Cairns. The photo is of a lynx in the snows of Norway. In the mid-19th century, the lynx was fairly widely distributed in Norway. After a decline and then recovery, there is now a permanent population of c300-350 lynx throughout the country.

Visit northshots.com to see more of Peter’s images.

RSGS: helping to make the connections between people, places & the planet

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NEWS People • Places • Planet Artigianelli-RSGS Partnership In November, with the invaluable help of several host families, we hosted 23 Italian students for a week in Perth. The group, who specialise in art and graphic design, shared their ideas for boosting our profile and improving our promotional materials as part of an ongoing class project.

The enthusiastic students from Istituto Pavoniano Artigianelli in Trento, northern Italy, spent a week in Edinburgh, before travelling north to Perth. With an S5 class from Perth High School, they learned about the work of Trees for Life and took part in their tree-planting programme, then explored Kinnoull Hill in Perth, where Fergus Cook, Greenspace Ranger, led the group in thinning trees. The students created a wonderful exhibition at RSGS headquarters, to share what they had learned during their time in Scotland.

We thoroughly enjoyed working with the students and their teachers, and were extremely impressed with their mature and positive approach to tasks throughout their time here.

Thank you to those volunteers who have staffed the Fair Maid’s House throughout 2014; your help has been enormously appreciated.

Compassionate Conservation

volunteer with us

Would you be interested in volunteering as a guide for 2015? All you need is an interest in finding out more about the Society and the visitor centre, a love for talking to people of all ages and backgrounds, and a few spare afternoons between April and October.

Current volunteers are enthusiastic.

“The highlights of volunteering are the people – the staff of RSGS, the other volunteers, and of course the visitors.

People really love to share their experiences with you – where they live, where they have visited, and lots of times the fact that they knew the Fair Maid’s House in the past.”

The visitor centre will be open from April to October 2015 (days and times to be confirmed). Please contact Alexa on 01738 455050 or email enquiries@rsgs.org if you would like to get involved.

Bitesize Usually when a problem is vast and insurmountable, it helps to break it down into more manageable steps. To date, the most effective international deal which resulted in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions was not even set up to do so – the Montreal Protocol was actually established to reduce chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), HCFCs and other refrigerant chemicals, to try to stop the hole in the ozone layer growing any larger. A deal was agreed relatively quickly, and although it isn’t perfect it may have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 4%.

So what else could we do that might bring about reductions on a global scale? What could we do in Scotland directly or through sharing examples that would make a difference? Scotland’s 2020 Climate Group, which RSGS Chief Executive Mike Robinson attends, has funded RSGS to take forward a project that will try to produce a series of steps that can progress action on this global issue, using the latest IPCC Fifth Assessment Report to guide it. Contact bitesize@rsgs.org if you would like to know more.

There is a new conservation movement emerging in Australia: compassionate conservation. For the past 200 years, wild animals that pose a threat to humans or livestock in Australia have been systematically shot, trapped and poisoned. Dan Ramp, who heads the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Sydney, says, “Years of research shows us that killing animals often makes no difference to the conservation targets we have set ourselves, so we need to think about other ways of engaging”.

rewilding

The Fair Maid’s House Needs You!

In some parts of the country, such as Victoria, scientists, farmers and local authorities are working together to find kinder and more effective ways to live with wildlife.

In Victoria, instead of killing foxes that prey on a penguin colony, tourism and local government officials have introduced a pair of guard dogs. Since their introduction in 2006, penguin numbers have increased from ten to close to 200. This successful example of compassionate conservation has increased penguin numbers without killing any foxes. However, there is yet to be widespread support for this new thinking.

E-blasts!

We enjoy being able to share our latest news with you in each edition of The Geographer, but we thought we could do this more than four times a year. Therefore, since November we have sent monthly ‘e-blasts’ straight to your inboxes. In each email you will find updates on the goings-on at RSGS HQ, as well as a snapshot from our history in the form of something from our collection.

If you would like to receive these updates, then please give us your email address; contact enquiries@rsgs.org to sign up.

sign up for e-blasts!

New Venue for Aberdeen Talks The venue for our Inspiring People talks in Aberdeen is changing, as of 5th January. The talks will now take place in the University’s Meston Building, Meston Walk, Old Aberdeen, AB24 3UE. The Meston Building is also used by the RSGS Aberdeen Group for their Travellers Talks.

NEWS People • Places • Planet Media coverage

Social Media The last few months have seen our social media interactions and followers/likes growing steadily. Please follow us on whichever platform you use, whether that be Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google+. We are also delighted to announce that in December we launched our new website (www.rsgs.org), so do let us know what you make of it.

follow us

We have also started our own YouTube channel where we will be sharing videos from our interviews with visiting speakers. Search for Royal Scottish Geographical Society on YouTube to see the latest videos, including our interviews with Leo Houlding and Børge Ousland.

In November, we were very happy when The Herald picked up on Mike Robinson’s ‘Science Matters’ article from the autumn edition of The Geographer. The paper ran an abbreviated version of Mike’s article, as well as publishing a piece by journalist Andrew Denholm on the ‘dumbing down’ of the school curriculum.

The Herald also picked up the topic as the lead piece in their Opinion section. We were very pleased to have been able to do so much to promote the teaching of geography and science in schools, as well as publicising what we see as the threat to these subjects. We would like to thank the teachers who shared their opinions with us before the publication of this piece.

Celebrating Croll We are grateful to all those members, supporters and trusts who have contributed to our Celebrating Croll appeal. We have been in discussion with various people to help take this project forward, and we are working with Green Edge Garden Design over the winter to develop plans and costings for the garden, before the project starts properly in the spring.

All 67 pupils from Madderty Primary visited us in October to see their work for the Plantlife exhibition on display, and to have a tour of our visitor centre. They were all entertained by geographical tales from our brilliant volunteers Freda and John.

They also went on a guided walk around Perth city centre to find out more about the history of Perth. It was a very busy, but rewarding morning!

Mrs Lemon, the headteacher, was pleased: “The children and staff had a wonderful time at the Fair Maid’s House.

It was a really fantastic morning and the children (and staff) gained a great deal from the experience.”

Celebrating Croll “Croll was one of the truly great Scottish scientists – someone who revolutionised how we think about the climate of the past... and from that, what’s waiting for us in the future.”

Professor Iain Stewart

RSGS Appeal Envelope 28.indd 1

Madderty Primary Visit

14/05/2014 14:58

Travel Photo Competition Since early November, we have been running a competition on social media, asking our followers to share their favourite travel photographs with us for the chance to be published on our new website or in The Geographer. We have had lots of entries and these are our three favourite images for this quarter.

If you would like to share your own travel photographs with us, in time for the next edition of The Geographer, please email them to enquiries@rsgs.org or share them via social media.

Winter in Norway, by Fiona Horton.

Near Port Lockroy, Antarctica, by Liz Eaton.

Parisian Reflections at Night, by Amy Sinead Moran.

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NEWS People • Places • Planet RSGS 2013-14 This pie chart shows how money was spent on the 20thMarch charity’s objectives in 2013-14. A review of the year, together with summary accounts, will be sent to members in early 2015. The AGM will be held on Friday 20th March 2015, in Perth, and we hope that many of you will be able to attend, to hear more about the RSGS’s activities and achievements.

RSGS Chairman Receives Icelandic Award In October 2014, the President of Iceland, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, presented Roger Crofts, naturalist, with the Knight’s Cross of the Icelandic Order of the Falcon.

The citation recognised Professor Crofts’ two decades of fruitful co-operation with Icelandic scientists and public institutions dealing with vegetation and environmental issues in Iceland.

The citation concluded, “With his close ties to Iceland, he has done an invaluable job for our The President of Iceland (left) country. His support and contribution has been with Professor Roger Crofts. characterised by a combination of sublime ideal and great knowledge of nature and the environment.”

Scottish Geography: A Historiography It has been encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which Professor Michael Pacione’s book, Scottish Geography: A Historiography, has been received by our members and the wider public. Professor Pacione has also received acclaim from colleagues in this country and overseas, with one describing it as “a memorial work”. The publication of Professor Pacione’s book received press coverage in his home town of Dundee in the Dundee Courier.

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet and would like to do so, copies are only £8 for RSGS members or £12 for nonmembers. Please contact the office or visit our website for more information or to place an order.

Promoting GIS In October, RSGS hosted a meeting of experts and educational bodies to discuss promoting the uptake and integration of GIS in schools. A productive meeting was chaired by Dr Vanessa Lawrence FRSGS, and developed an action plan to try to seek GIS’s wider adoption and use.

130 and 5,000 On 4th December 2014, we celebrated our 130th anniversary and our 5,000th talk!

We celebrated the momentous day at RSGS HQ with birthday cake, before some staff members travelled to Edinburgh to see Børge Ousland give his inspiring talk, and the Society’s 5,000th. Børge said, “As a polar explorer, speaking for RSGS is almost a rite of passage that sees you join the great adventurers and explorers of history; it is an honour to have my work recognized like this.

However, to deliver the Society’s 5,000th talk is obviously of great historical significance, and I look forward even more to sharing my Arctic and Antarctic adventures with the audience”. After the talk, Chairman Professor Roger Crofts conferred an RSGS Fellowship upon Børge.

Here at RSGS HQ we are proud to represent the Society in its 130th year, and to be custodians of its work and heritage. We look forward to continuing our work to strengthen the charity and to raise its profile as a modern and relevant institution.

Miss Scott’s Legacy In November, we were notified by a solicitor in Dunfermline that Miss Elizabeth Scott, a retired teacher who had been a Life Member of the Society from April 1963 until her death in June 2014, had very kindly remembered the RSGS in her Will. Her generous legacy included an unrestricted donation of £5,000 and a share in the residue of her estate.

We are grateful for Miss Scott’s long and continuing support of the RSGS. She has helped us to achieve a great deal over the years, and her latest gift came as a very welcome surprise.

If you would like to know more about leaving a legacy to the RSGS, please contact Mike or Susan on 01738 455050.

Talks update We are enjoying a very successful talks season so far across all 13 of our local group locations. Talks have been receiving a good amount of coverage in local press, and we continue to publicise each talk as much as possible. We are also seeing a growing amount of communication on social media from people who have attended and enjoyed our talks.

The speakers who have generated the most buzz so far have been Leo Houlding, George McGavin and Børge Ousland. If there is a talk that you have particularly enjoyed or a speaker that you would like to suggest, please get in touch with us and let us know – we would like to hear from you.

NEWS People • Places • Planet Local Groups are 130 A number of our local groups are celebrating 130 years this winter. RSGS Aberdeen Group Chair Iain B Rankin said, “As a member who has both enjoyed and benefited from the work of the RSGS over many years, I consider it a privilege to wish the RSGS every success for the future.”

Dr John Rowan, Chairman of the RSGS Dundee Group, said of the anniversary, “As one of the original gang of four branches, we are immensely proud of the Society’s traditions as an educational charity. We are excited about the next 130 years and look forward to maintaining Dundee’s prominent role in the organisation”. Speaking as Co-Chair of the RSGS Edinburgh Group, Margaret Wilkes said, “A hundred and thirty years on and very conscious of this milestone, Professor Alison McCleery and I have the timely privilege of jointly chairing RSGS’s Edinburgh Group and celebrating this historic occasion”. Finally, wishing the Society well for the years ahead, Alan Colvill, Chairman of the RSGS Glasgow Group, said, “The Glasgow committee and members congratulate the Society on its distinguished record over 130 years, and are confident that the Society’s contribution to geographical thought and education will be every bit as innovative and distinguished in the future”.

Ebola Along with the rest of the world, we have been watching the spread of Ebola in West Africa with concern. Many of the issues surrounding zoonotic diseases, such as Ebola, were raised in last winter’s edition of The Geographer, including the difficulties faced by researchers trying to trace the origin of a disease.

Ebola has also had an adverse effect on the treatment of other more common health issues in West Africa. Professor Sarah Cleaveland, one of the authors in last winter’s magazine, has said, “because of the high toll of Ebola on medical staff and the fear that is evoked in going to health facilities, many more thousands of people are dying of common diseases, such as diarrhoea, respiratory diseases and malaria because of lack of access to even the most basic health care.”

Earth Science Higher In November, RSGS hosted a useful meeting with the SQA Chief Executive Janet Brown and Head of Science Alastair MacGregor, with the group seeking to develop an Earth Science Higher. In a long and positive meeting, we discussed the issues which impeded the take-up of Geology, and the need to be able to ensure that if Earth Science qualifications are available at a Higher or similar level, we would all have to play a much more proactive role in ensuring their successful adoption and take up. We will keep you informed as further discussions develop.

RSGS Medals 2015

The RSGS’s prestigious Medals and Awards allow us to recognise outstanding contributions to geographical exploration and learning. We are now inviting nominations for the RSGS Medals 2015.

If there is someone you think merits an honour, whether for their global example and impact or their local effort and contribution, we would encourage you to nominate them; please ask the office or check the website for a nomination form.

nominate a medallist

The Polar Academy: the training continues Craig Mathieson, RSGS Explorer-in-Residence The Polar Academy continues to flourish, and the participants have now completed their week-long training at Glenmore Lodge. They were all put through their paces, covering everything from navigation to expedition first-aid. The final three days saw the team out on the hills, this mini-expedition teaching them the importance of team work and basic expedition camping.

Each member had to carry a heavy rucksack over very rough ground, across rivers and up hills for several hours each day, before having to set up their camp and prepare their own food. By the end of the week, they were left with no doubt on the levels of fitness required for the expedition to the Arctic.

Training never stops however; each week team members have to attend after-school training sessions, plus multi-trips to their local gym (North Lanarkshire Council kindly gave everyone a free gym pass as part of their support).

Looking forward, discussions have taken place with other local authorities, including Edinburgh and Perth & Kinross, to replicate what we are doing in North Lanarkshire. My vision would be for every local authority across Scotland to put a team forward and let the invisible kids in our schools shine and be true role models to their peers.

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From Antarctica to the Amazon A conversation with Leo Houlding FRSGS

I’m lucky to have seen some of the most beautiful and extreme landscapes on Earth. Perhaps the most memorable is the Fenriskjeften, in the Queen Maud Land area where Ulvetanna lies in Antarctica. There is nowhere else like it. Just these giant fangs of granite that stick up out of the Antarctic Plateau for thousands of metres, it really does look like something out of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars. I had wanted to go there since I first heard about it decades ago. Finally realising that dream and seeing it did not disappoint, it really is otherworldly.

The place we went to in the Amazon in Venezuela, Cerro Autana, was hard to get to and really incredible. It was my first big jungle experience, and it is hostile and harsh but alive.

There were some really magical moments on that trip: we camped in a quartz-lined cave high up the face and watched the sun rise.

A more accessible place though is the Yosemite Valley in California.

It never fails to astonish me how amazing it is. Of all the places I have been, it is so touristy but you drive through this tunnel and are exposed to one of the most amazing views on this planet. If you do go there, get off the valley

floor, away from the crowds, and you’ll find yourself in the place that John Muir visited and wrote about; it really is astonishing.

I am 30 now, and a father, which made me realise that it is a privilege to go to these places and see these things. I do some work in schools, and to be able to share my experiences with people, especially from underprivileged backgrounds, is quite grounding. They often have no idea that these things exist, and that you can do the stuff I do in these cool environments; you can just see their jaws hit the floor. I am sure that for most of them, it won’t change their lives, but now and then there will be ones whose lives are changed by it.

More recently, what I am trying to do is to take that experience and change it directly into learning. I have been working with OCR, really trying to turn the level of inspiration into better exam results. It is maybe a bit more boring but it turns that educational offering into the national curriculum, and tricks kids into learning boring stuff by making it inspiring and interesting. You can have a framework that links to a website that works with live data from an expedition.

In October 2014, worldclass climber Leo Houlding spoke to RSGS audiences in Inverness, Perth and Stirling.

In Perth, we arranged for Leo to run a climbing session for a select group of children at an indoor climbing wall, and we were delighted to present him with Honorary Fellowship of the RSGS, in recognition of his inspirational expeditions. Leo’s enthusiasm for climbing was mild when compared to the children’s excitement at meeting him!

Climbing with Leo Claire McGhie, Charlie Swan, Matthew Munro, Perth High School We killed time by going to our school climbing wall almost every day, trying out new routes and ideas, just for something to do. All that changed when our instructor, Tony McClelland, said that we had been invited to a talk and climbing session with Leo Houlding. We knew that Leo was an amazing climber, but after researching him, our excitement grew: he had done things we could only dream of doing. And we were going to meet him and climb with him! The next few weeks went past in a blur, climbing more and more, trying to hone our skills and increase our fitness, trying to learn anything we could, to impress Leo. The day came; we were nervous. But when Leo walked through the door and waved, all our built-up excitement and nerves fell away. Wearing jeans and a tee-shirt, he walked over so chilled-out and introduced himself, like we didn’t already know?! It was amazing to realise that someone who had done such extraordinary things could still be so nice and down-toearth.

He gave some great tips, signed some clothes (and shoes, and the climbing wall!), and climbed some routes, but all too quickly the session was over. As we walked away, we were still so amazed that no-one said anything, then everyone spoke at once, recounting different parts of the session. And so it continued throughout dinner, until three hours later we were ready for Leo’s talk about his latest expedition to Antarctica.

We knew a bit about the expedition, but he recounted it with little quirky extras and so much enthusiasm and passion. The whole experience was inspiring; we couldn’t sleep that night, our heads full of ideas for what we could accomplish that might come within reach of what Leo has done.

The next day we went back to boring old high school life, sitting in our classrooms, daydreaming about our possible futures in the climbing world. We got to climb with one of the world’s top climbers and it was the best. We have been climbing at every opportunity since. Just climbing a little bit isn’t enough now, we want to be amazing!

Defining the Landscape

I visited Leptis Magna the other day. I didn’t really know how many Roman sites there are in Libya! Apparently it is the largest Roman site outside of Italy. Anyway we had it to ourselves basically.....the potential for tourism in this country is massive.

Rewilding Dr Charles Warren, University of St Andrews

“Wild places are now amongst the most valued and cherished landscapes on the planet.”

Wilderness and wild places were seen, through most of human history, as threatening and evil, the haunt of dangerous beasts and unknown terrors. Wild nature was bad, and in need of civilising; ‘good nature’ was tamed nature, serving society’s needs. These days our value systems have turned through 180 degrees. Wild places are now amongst the most valued and cherished landscapes on the planet, celebrated by the arts, protected by law, and iconic for the nature conservation movement. The preservation of wilderness was, indeed, one of the seminal motivations for conservation pioneers like the emigrant Scot, John Muir, the so-called father of the national park movement in the late 19th century. But despite these early stirrings of nature conservation, throughout most of the 20th century conservationists were on the back foot, reacting to the myriad pressures of inexorable industrial development, and desperately trying to safeguard shrinking fragments of threatened nature. Only in recent times has conservation got onto the front foot and started to be proactive, no longer simply trying to stem the tide but beginning to dream of turning the tide, of restoring nature to its former glory and of unchaining the wild.

‘Ecological restoration’, with its focus on restoring natural processes, is a term used for aspects of this newly-confident strand of conservation, but it is ‘rewilding’ which has increasingly been grabbing the headlines and stirring debate.

In essence, rewilding is about giving nature free rein once more – freeing it to be selfwilled (the origin of the word ‘wilderness’). It is about nature out of bounds, doing its own

thing. But rewilding comes in so many guises that there is, as yet, very little agreement on precisely what it means or comprises. For some, the archetypal example is the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s. Others dream much bigger and advocate so-called ‘Pleistocene rewilding’, the restoration of the megafauna from post-ice-age times (using contemporary proxies), so that elephants and lions would once again roam the plains of North America and Europe. No one has (yet) made such bold proposals for Scotland, but rewilding projects of diverse kinds are underway. Many, such as the Carrifran Wildwood project in the Borders, or Trees for Life in Glen Affric, are focused on the restoration of lost woodlands, whereas the primary objective at Alladale Estate in Sutherland is to bring back a suite of large mammals such as wild boar, moose and ultimately lynx and wolves. Those responsible for such initiatives are equally diverse, from environmental charities to local trusts to private owners. Whatever their specific motivations and aims, all aspire to shift ecosystems along a trajectory from less to more natural, and from managed to wild.

Many advocates of rewilding are passionate visionaries. At a public event in Edinburgh in October, two of the British prophets of rewilding – George Monbiot and Alan Watson Featherstone – painted compelling pictures of the inadequacies of current conservation management and the potential benefits of promoting wildness. Monbiot, in particular, spoke with what a colleague described as Leninist fervour, and his

shoot-from-the-hip talk was certainly revolutionary in tone, castigating the current guardians of conservation for the cautious smallness of their vision and ridiculing tweedy game sportsmen as ‘plonkers in pantaloons’! His vision of rewilding in his 2013 book Feral is no less bold and iconoclastic.

Featherstone, meanwhile, spoke with equal conviction about the ‘whole ecosystem regeneration’ work of Trees for Life that he initiated long before rewilding was fashionable, illustrating the transformation from ecologically impoverished bare hillsides to flourishing young woodland that has been achieved.

But ‘official conservation’ may not be quite as guilty of limited ambition as Monbiot’s sharply entertaining caricatures suggest.

Scottish Natural Heritage (then NCC) commenced pioneering restoration work at Creag Meagaidh as long ago as the late 1980s, and it has spent much of the last ten years developing a map of Wild Land Areas in Scotland. Finally approved in 2014, the map’s 42 areas encompass landscapes which show few obvious signs of human modification, and in which that special but indefinable sense of wildness can be experienced.

Covering 19% of the country and 60% of the north-west Highlands and Islands, these areas are recognised as ‘nationally important’ in planning policy and worthy of strong protection.

SNH has been urged on in this project by many environmental organisations, most notably by the John Muir Trust, champion of wild places, which regards the map as “a world class wild land map to match our world class wild landscapes”. Opinion polls show that large majorities of the public believe that wild land is

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valuable and deserves protection, especially in the context of the rapid spread of large wind farms which compromise the wild quality of upland areas.

Clearly, then, there is now considerable momentum behind moves to safeguard and restore wild places, evidenced not only in popular culture and voluntary environmental organisations but in state-sponsored conservation too. It is an energetic and growing movement with parallels in many countries across Europe and beyond. But it would be naïve to imagine that rewilding is uncontroversial or without its critics. It can stir up great antipathy, and in some quarters ‘wilderness’ is still a highly pejorative word. For example, the official recognition of large swathes of the Highlands and Islands as ‘Wild Land Areas’ has been fiercely opposed by local communities who suspect that this characterisation will prove limiting, restricting their options for reversing economic decline. This is amplified by a deep resentment at the labelling of their ancestral homelands as natural and unspoiled, a categorisation which they see as tantamount to airbrushing out of history thousands of years of human engagement with the land. They fear that the implicit valuing of wildness over and above human use of the landscape will amount to ‘new Highland Clearances’. Hence the bitter observation in a West Highland Free Press editorial that the newly-mapped wild areas are to be “condemned by a quango to a perpetual wilderness”.

Balancing the legitimate aspirations of local people with the increasing desire for an expanding area of self-willed nature is thus proving to be challenging. Particularly in the

Highlands and Islands, rewilding touches on some very raw nerves relating to the Clearances and to the more recent history of insensitive, top-down conservation (sometimes dubbed ‘scientific colonialism’ or even ‘green fascism’). In deserted, depopulated glens where, as Hugh MacLennan memorably put it, “you feel that everyone who ever mattered is dead and gone”, the argument is made that the lost native species most deserving of reintroduction is, in fact, Homo sapiens.

Reintroductions, as more normally understood, are no less contentious. In conservation circles, the return of sea eagles and red kites, and the prospect of beavers recolonising Scottish rivers, is celebrated, and there is a widely-shared hope that the carnivores currently missing from the top of the food chain – lynx and wolves – will one day be welcomed back so that ecosystems can function more naturally. Beyond ecological benefits, the prospect of hearing a wolf howling under a Highland moon could provide a spine-tingling boost for wildlife tourism. But, unsurprisingly, those who fear that the return of such species would damage their business, notably livestock farmers, reject the idea out of hand. The acrimonious exchange of claims and counter-claims surrounding lamb predation by sea eagles on Mull is perhaps a preview of the social, economic and political battles which could be triggered by the reintroduction of carnivores.

More philosophically, the ‘re’ of rewilding has proved controversial because it implies turning the clock back and recreating a vanished natural world. Some projects explicitly aim to do just that. However, quite apart from

the unresolvable debates about which is the ‘right’ moment from the past to select as the guiding template for the future, many argue that in a world of rapid environmental change populated by unprecedented numbers of people, the past offers an equivocal guide to how nature ought to be in the future. Aiming for ‘naturalness’ in a much-changed and rapidly changing cultural landscape such as Scotland’s turns out to be far less straightforward than once imagined, in terms of both the ends and the means. ‘Future nature’ is unlikely to be like past nature, not least because of the challenge of negotiating the place of people within evolving socialecological nature.

“[Rewilding] is inspirational and controversial in almost equal measure.”

Rewilding is a broad and poorlydefined label encompassing a huge diversity of projects, practices and dreams. It is inspirational and controversial in almost equal measure. But there seems little doubt that some of its manifestations are here to stay and to develop, even if some of the more radical proposals may remain in the realm of dreams for decades to come.

© RSGS / Mike Robinson

Communities & Carbon

The Hushings George Monbiot

“Rewilding... has great potential to attract walkers and naturelovers.”

In the heart of the Cambrian Mountains, I drove up a bumpy track to a small stone farmhouse.

In the green fields around it grazed Welsh speckle-faced sheep, with panda bear eyes and comical black noses. Clear water poured over a sill into a raised pool beside the tidy farmyard.

A white and caramel sheepdog lunged and barked on the end of its chain.

Dafydd Morris-Jones and his mother, Delyth, came out to greet me. Their family had taken the tenancy of this farm in 1885, and had bought the land in 1942.

Dafydd had just replaced the roof of one of his barns – that had held since the beginning of his great-grandfather’s tenancy – using the original slate. “It should do for the next 150 years,” he told me.

This article is extracted with permission from George Monbiot’s book, Feral.

© RSGS / Mike Robinson

After tea and scones, Dafydd took me out onto his land. He gently moved the conversation onto the subject that divided us.

“My concern with rewilding is that it takes the people out. I see it as a post-Romantic ideology which imagines what the land would be like if only people weren’t here. Look at what the Wildland Network [this British group is now either dormant or dead] says at the bottom of its website: it wants the landscape “to be freed of human interference and managed with minimal intervention”. That yells ‘cleansing’ to me.”

There was, he explained, a deep local hostility to planting trees, as a result of the vandalism inflicted by the Forestry Commission during the middle decades of the 20th century. As I had seen elsewhere in Wales, the commission launched a kind of Cultural Revolution in Wales, in which its green guards requisitioned ancient halls and

farmsteads and dynamited them. In some cases they erased derelict villages, and replaced them with party-approved plantations of identical Sitka spruce trees. It was a crime for which there has been little acknowledgement and no reckoning.

“The people of Myherin [the valley of the little stream to the east of his farm] were forced to leave: their land and homes were purchased under pressure.

The commission planted 17,000 hectares of spruce where they had lived. Of the ten houses it bought, just three are still visible: two are in ruins, one is a bothy. The rest have just disappeared beneath the trees.

The roots smashed up what remained. They destroyed all traces of the community. I’m not against something new, not by any means, but it should be a progression from what you’ve got, not wiping the slate clean.

“Conservation should be about how we can live in nature. When it deviates from that, you forget that you’re still looking at it from a human perspective. I think rewilding is an oxymoron. As William Cronon points out, if you argue for wilderness for its own sake, you’re still imposing a human point of view.

“I’d much prefer to see trees here than wind turbines. But neither would keep the school open, support the local shop or reopen the pub. The average age of farmers in the UK is now 62.

It rises every year. The danger is that we have old people who speak the ‘old’ language and a place barren of everyone else.

That’s a chilling thought.”

I found these arguments compelling, and I left the farm feeling troubled and confused.

The idea that Dafydd and Delyth and people like them should be pushed aside to make way for wildlife was also intolerable.

As absentee ranching spreads and mechanisation advances, employment on the farms declines, as it is doing worldwide.

Farming in Wales now produces less than a quarter of the income generated by wildlife, despite the fact that it occupies a much greater area than the land set aside for nature. I have yet to see any plan for hill farming which predicts that sheep raising will provide a growing or even stable share of national employment.

The remaining farmers, like Dafydd, survive by making much of their income from activities other than farming. Rewilding, on the other hand, has great potential to attract walkers and nature-lovers. Though the Cambrian Mountains are close to the conurbations of the West Midlands, they are scarcely visited today.

In the early years, rewilding requires plenty of labour: planting trees, reintroducing lost plants and animals, removing fences and controlling exotic invasive species, such as rhododendron and Sitka spruce, and stray sheep. As the ecosystem recovered, the rewilding workforce would decline, but the potential for generating money from tourism would rise. Banishing the sheep and banishing the people are not the same thing. It is possible to envisage a thriving community of former farmers acting as wardens and guides, providing bed and breakfast, farm shops, clay-pigeon shooting, bicycle hire, horse riding, fishing lakes, falconry, archery and all the other services that now help rural communities to survive.

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The Antarctica Connection Dick Balharry

However rewilding is interpreted, it can and must be part of a strategic plan for Highland land use that will urgently address the fundamental issues of landscapes that have suffered centuries of extractive exploitation and continued loss of carbon to the atmosphere. And with such compelling evidence for climate change, perhaps this brings a new urgency to the need for rewilding.

Frank Fraser Darling, in West Highland Survey (1995), was one of the first to highlight the ill health of Scotland’s northern landscapes. In the preface written in 1954, he states that “the Highlands and Islands are largely a devastated terrain and any policy which ignores this fact cannot hope to achieve rehabilitation.”

In 2014 Reay Clarke produced his excellent work, 200 Years of Farming in Sutherland. His final words of this fine book on the Clarke dynasty are very powerful.

“Sometimes we stop using practices of husbandry which are beneficial and we change to ways which impoverish the soil. No serious steps have yet been taken to rebuild the fertility of these mountains and moorlands.”

These two writers and many scientists between these two periods would attest to the gravity of the situation.

My first involvement in rewilding was between 1962 and 1974 at Beinn Eighe, where I had responsibility for implementing the Management Policy of Ecological Planting, a highly interventionist method of fencing, ploughing, planting and phosphating at Glas Leitir (‘wood of the grey slope’). This remnant of ancient natural native pine forest was selected by the Nature Conservancy as the UK’s first National Nature Reserve (NNR) in 1951, and was under political and public pressure to demonstrate results.

In 1974 I was based at the Cairngorms National Nature Reserve – the management

policy was identical to Beinn Eighe. By 1976 a new policy was in place, following a robust internal debate. The Nature Conservancy Council cancelled their commitment to a shooting tenant on the 9,000 acres (approximately) they owned at Inshriach, and began a deer reduction programme. From then on, no fencing, ploughing or planting was undertaken. The success of this pioneering action is apparent and can be seen at Creag Fhiaclach, two kilometres to the south of Loch an Eilein.

In 1986 Creag Meagaidh was declared an NNR. At over 10,000 acres, this was an important Site of Special Scientific Interest, including ancient native birch woodland with little evidence of regeneration. Here we also adopted a deer reduction policy.

By 1996 the natural regeneration of the birch woodland and its associated fauna and flora was well established.

Similar approaches have since been taken at Abernethy NNR (by RSPB) in 1988, at Mar Lodge (by the National Trust for Scotland) in 1996, and at Glen Feshie NNR (by Anders Povlson and Thomas MacDonell) in 2006.

Having witnessed the deer density and negative regeneration up to this date, the results are an exemplar for other owners to follow. These six cases, with distinctive locations and different circumstances, have produced young and vigorous habitats that are sadly exceptions. They do, however, illustrate the challenges and successes of ensuring that our ancient native pine forests are regenerating naturally.

The methods used to achieve rewilding, including reintroduction of species, should be decided by those who live and work within that community.

Other than Beinn Eighe, all these sites depended on the natural processes progressing with minimum management intervention, and precise outcomes were unpredictable and acceptable.

But along with the obvious concerns, there is a new paradigm which demands greater action. As James McClintock recorded in his book Lost Antarctica (2012), ice cores show that “at no time in the past 420 thousand years had any of the peaks exceeded carbon dioxide values of about 200-300 parts per million. However, since the industrial revolution levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have climbed well beyond these peaks, attaining 360 ppm in 1999. By 2011 it was 393 ppm.” Perhaps a new emphasis on land use based on reducing loss of carbon to the atmosphere will help the Scottish Government’s ambitious targets to mitigate adverse impacts of changing climate.

If we embarked on a concept of a carbon audit, not unlike a safety audit, that estates undertook to cover a given area of land, this would form a baseline from which gain or loss of carbon would be measured. Where intervention is desired, then the carbon loss due to this action would need a carbon assessment judgement made on a future ten-year period.

With appropriate incentives for carbon reduction, the land would regain health, leading to benefits for people and wildlife.

“…the results are an exemplar for other owners to follow.”

© RSGS / Mike Robinson

On the Map

Mapping Wild Land Dr Steve Carver, Director, Wildland Research Institute, University of Leeds

A map of Scotland showing wild land areas was published in June 2014 to accompany the new Scottish Planning Policy 2 and National Planning Framework 3 documents. While not a statutory designation, they are a statement of government policy on wild land character and how plans should “identify and safeguard the character of areas of wild land as identified on the map”. As a landscape description this map has little by way of legal purchase, but significantly it does offer some protection for wild land character through an obligation to consider this important aspect of the wider landscape in the planning process.

The map itself has been drawn up by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), using the latest techniques and data based on earlier work by the Wildland Research Institute (WRi) at the University of Leeds for the two Scottish National Parks. A rigorous, robust and repeatable three-stage approach is used.

Stage I focuses on the use of Geographical Information Systems or computer mapping technology to identify where landscapes sit within a continuum of locations from least to most wild, as measured according to attributes pertaining to ruggedness and the challenging nature of the terrain, remoteness (from settlement and transportation) and naturalness (lack of visible human infrastructure and unmodified vegetation). Stage II uses statistical methods to classify degrees of wildness based on the Stage I map and identify the ‘core’ wild land areas across Scotland. Stage III uses expert local knowledge and onthe-ground features to refine the boundaries of the wild land areas shown in the final map.

Scotland has been at the forefront of addressing the points raised by the European Parliament Resolution on Wilderness, which was passed in February 2009 with a majority

of 538 votes for to just 19 against.

Firstly, WRi were contracted by the Scottish Government to undertake a review of the status and conservation of wild land in Europe as a means of informing further development of policy on Scottish wild land. This has in turn been widely cited in developing EU policy documents and policy on wilderness.

Secondly, Scotland has moved beyond its earlier definition of wild land formalised

by SNH in 2002, to developing the wild land map as a means of identifying exactly which landscapes we are talking about. This ensures that Scotland has a strong and defensible information base against which Alladale. © RSGS / Mike Robinson decisions can be made regarding developments likely to impact on wildness, such as wind farms and hill tracks.

The maps could also be used to support thinking on ecological rewilding, and reintroductions of missing keystone species such as beaver, lynx and wolf, by identifying the most appropriate target areas, creating suitable ecological conditions, and designing better-connected landscapes that will enable these species to migrate throughout Scotland with the minimum of impact on human activities such as farming and livestock.

“…developing the wild land map as a means of identifying exactly which landscapes we are talking about.”

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Further Reading

SNH Policy Statement, Wildness in Scotland’s Countryside (www.snh. gov.uk/docs/A150654.pdf) SNH, Mapping Scotland’s wildness and wild land (www. snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlandsnature/looking-after-landscapes/ landscape-policy-and-guidance/ wild-land/mapping) Wildland Research Institute (www. wildlandresearch.org)

Mongolian Wild Land

The nomadic groups of the Mongolian Altai Mountains David Baxendale

“...winter here in the mountains can be as brutal as anywhere on Earth.

Temperatures averaging minus 40 degrees centigrade are common, and it is truly a feat of human endurance to live and survive here.”

The Altai Mountains run from Siberia in Russia all the way down to Mongolia’s Gobi Desert – an enormous mountain range that covers a vast area of over 16,000km and is studded with huge glacial lakes and permanently snow-covered high peaks that rise above 4,500m.

This is one of the world’s last true wildernesses, extremely rugged and devoid of roads, electricity or other human advancements. Mongolia is classified as the world’s least densely populated country, and most of the country’s population can be found in the eastern capital of Ulaanbaatar. Fly four hours to the last airstrip in the West at Ulgii, and then drive in Russian military vehicles toward the Chinese border for three solid days, and you climb up into the mountains and a true wilderness that’s unchanged for hundreds of years.

The short summer months are pleasant, with mountain flowers and pasture in the valleys, and nighttime temperatures falling typically to minus 3 or 4 degrees. However, winter here in the mountains can be as brutal as anywhere on Earth.

Temperatures averaging minus 40 degrees centigrade are common, and it is truly a feat of human endurance to live and survive here.

The Tuvan people have lived a nomadic lifestyle for thousands of years, herding their livestock throughout the region. In Mongolia it is estimated that there are only around 3,000 left, although they can also be found in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

A large part of the Tuvan culture is their respect for nature and their

David Baxendale is a travel photographer based in Glasgow (see www. davidbaxendale. com). In July 2014, he travelled to the Altai Mountains in Western Mongolia with the crew and fixers who worked on the BBC’s Human Planet series, living with two nomadic groups – the Kazakh and the Tuvan.

belief that every part of nature around them has a spirit that weaves the fabric of their world.

People sensitive to these spirits are the Shamans. They are the most respected, and feared, part of the community.

I also met and lived alongside Kazakh nomads.

This ethnic group makes up around 90% of the population of the province (Bayan-Ölgii), with around 100,000 Kazakhs spread thinly across this vast, rugged and mountainous wilderness.

This area has a distinct Kazakh culture, and differs from the rest of Mongolia. The Kazakhs are Muslim and they speak Kazakh in everyday life, only speaking Mongolian to communicate with other tribes or groups.

After coming to the wild Altai Mountains in the 18th century to flee the Russians, they were able to preserve their traditional way of life.

I travelled to valleys and areas where they told me that no other foreigner had ever visited before.

The photographs in this article are a sample of my expedition, and the people that I met there.

Breaking wild mares One day each July, the Kazakh nomads lasso and catch around a dozen wild mares. They are broken in bareback that day, and then live with the nomads throughout the coming winter, each helping the other survive the brutally cold winter.

Over a three-week period in July 2014, I lived amongst them and photographed their daily lives.

Indira A 78-year-old lady called Indira inside her family’s ger. She was a member of the Tuvan nomadic group in the Upper Dayan Valley. It is quite acceptable to simply walk inside the ger and sit down, and a warm welcome of alcoholic fermented mares milk, cheese and traditional pastries is sure to follow.

All images © David Baxendale - www.davidbaxendale.com/

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Silou the Eagle Hunter Silou is a Kazakh nomad who is a Golden Eagle Hunter in the Altai Mountains. Here, he rides a ridge at dusk on horseback with his eagle, and the Tsambagarav Glacier can be seen in the background. There are around 60 Golden Eagle Hunters left today, and they use this bird of prey to hunt for fox and wolf as a source of food and furs. Silou was featured in the BBC documentary Human Planet.

The last Tuvan Shaman This is a photograph of Galba, the last Tuvan Shaman in Mongolia, conducting her ritual at her sacred waterfall. Using a skin drum, animal furs, blessed water and lit spruce twigs, she sang softly and drummed for 30 minutes to communicate with the spirits she felt around her.

Inside a Kazakh ger This is the inside of a typical Kazakh ger. The dung-burning stove can be seen in the centre and is used for cooking and heat. The kitchen area is to the left, with beds around the rest of the ger.

Beautiful handmade rugs can be seen lining the walls.

Eagle girl Ashol-Pan is the world’s only female Eagle Hunter. At only 13 years of age she has just obtained her first golden eagle, which is one year old and is called a balapan while it’s trained. The eagle will live with Ashol-Pan for around nine years, and will hunt with her throughout this time. It will then be released to the wild, and normally live to be 25 years old. It will breed back in the wild and create the next generation of balapan golden eagles for the nomads of western Mongolia.

Carpathian & Cantabrian Mountains

European Wild Land Paul Lister and Emilia Hungerford, The European Nature Trust

“…there are regions in Europe where extensive natural forests and wild landscapes still exist...”

Native forestry at Alladale Wilderness Reserve. © Max Milligan

Paul Lister founded The European Nature Trust (TENT) in 2001 to help preserve and restore the last remaining areas of wilderness and degraded habitats in Europe.

At the outset, TENT concentrated its energies on restoration and rewilding projects at Alladale Wilderness Reserve, in the Scottish Highlands. The reserve was once a traditional sporting estate with much of the land degraded through deforestation and drainage of peatland, creating a barren landscape that supported very little biodiversity. Few people are aware that the Scottish Highlands are a shadow of their former glory, with just 1% of what the Romans called the Great Forest of Caledon remaining.

TENT, in partnership with Alladale, has been working to restore the native Highland ecosystem on the reserve; to date, over 800,000 native trees have been planted, 224 hectares of degraded peatland have been restored, and native wildlife, notably red squirrels, have been reintroduced.

However, an ecosystem without large predators is incomplete, and therefore Paul Lister is developing the idea of bringing back wolves to this remote region of Scotland in a substantially fenced area, so that deer numbers will be kept in check and natural regeneration and rewilding can occur.

Romanian Carpathians. © Leaota

This has already happened elsewhere, in places such as Yellowstone National Park in the US, where the riparian ecosystem has benefited from wolf reintroduction, and across Europe, where charismatic species are returning unaided to their former ranges and are enriching the biodiversity and landscape.

Such reintroduction will only

be possible with the consent of neighbouring landowners, and with resulting benefits to local communities through nature tourism and other related activities.

The initiative for Scotland will be developed following a socioeconomic study, which will be completed in spring 2015.

TENT has been working to raise awareness of these projects through media communications and outdoor environmental education such as the Highland Wilderness Experience. This week-long programme, now in its eighth year, takes place over six weeks each spring at Alladale, and encourages young people to connect with, enjoy and learn more about nature.

In comparison to comparative ecological degradation of the Scottish Highlands, there are regions in Europe where extensive natural forests and wild landscapes still exist with little interference from man, such as the spectacular Carpathian Mountains in Romania – an area that supports a wealth of natural biodiversity, including Europe’s largest populations of brown bear, wolf and lynx.

However, this too is under threat from habitat loss, from heavy logging (much of it illegal) as well as construction of new ski resorts, houses and roads.

In 2007, TENT extended its focus to conservation work in mainland Europe in recognition of the urgent need to protect areas such as the Carpathians. The Trust has partnered with a Romanian conservation charity, Foundation Conservation Carpathia (FCC), which is dedicated to creating one of Europe’s largest protected forest areas, centred on a wilderness reserve covering some 50,000 hectares.

TENT and FCC are also involved in seeking to secure the administration of a 200,000

hectare adjacent Natura 2000 site in the Romanian Carpathians which, due to a lack of proper park management, is threatened by uncontrolled logging.

The aim of this FCC initiative is to develop a model illustrating how protected wilderness areas can provide important benefits (nonextractive) for local communities and landowners through ecotourism and ecosystem services – a model that could be taken to other wilderness sites across Europe.

As part of its support for FCC, TENT has produced a promotional booklet (Wild Europe: Carpathia) and a documentary film series (Wild Carpathia I, II, III) which highlight Romania’s wealth of natural landscapes and cultural riches, and raise awareness of the environmental problems facing its wilderness areas.

The series has been broadcast in over 120 countries and in 12 different languages on Travel Channel, and continues to be aired across the world and online, generating well over one million hits on YouTube.

Education is another key element of TENT’s work in Romania.

Wild Kingdom, for example, is a mobile school education project (essentially a travelling bus) launched in Bucharest in spring 2013. In its first year the bus visited more than 50 schools and engaged 15,000 children, providing them with environmental education, and teaching them the value of Romania’s incredible landscape.

These are still early days and, looking ahead, TENT intends to have a far greater impact in European wilderness restoration and protection. The Trust knows full well that much more work is required to help safeguard our continent’s wilderness areas before they are lost forever.

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Living with Bears in Spain Brian D’Arcy

In the Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid, there is a 4m tall bronze and stone statue of a bear standing up against a ‘strawberry tree’. A symbol of the city, the bear and fruit tree also feature on Madrid’s coat of arms. Popular legend has it that the original settlement was called Ursaria by the Romans, due to the number of bears living in the surrounding forests at that time.

Once found throughout Spain, real bears are long gone from Madrid, but there are ancient associations.

In the mountains of Cantabria in the north-west, gigantic cave bears were contemporaries of the Palaeolithic people whose famous cave art survived in the paintings of bison, deer and wild boar.

Incredibly, the modern inhabitants of Cantabria are still sharing the land with wild bears: the seriously endangered Cantabrian brown bear.

Together with a relict population in the Pyrenees, these are the last wild bears in Spain.

The Cantabrian bears are a race of Ursus arctos, the Holarctic bear whose various races include the grizzly in North America, and brown bears in Alaska, eastern Europe and northern Asia.

With peaks over 2,000m, the Cantabrian Mountains run eastwest for about 300km along the southern edge of Asturias and Cantabria, and include several national parks and other protected areas, notably the Picos de Europa at the eastern end, and the Parque Natural de Somiedo in the west. It is estimated that some 150-200 Cantabrian brown bears survive in the wild, with most in the western half of the range.

The Cantabrian bears are smaller than their American cousins: a big Alaskan brown bear might weigh 500kg and be 3m in length; Cantabrian brown bears are more likely to weigh 120-150kg and be up to 2m in length. The bears are omnivorous, and the diet varies with the seasons. Consequently, the bears range from the green pastures above the tree line, down through the scree and scrub forest that clings to the mountain sides, to the valley bottoms. They even turn up in people’s gardens occasionally.

Respectful co-existence is perhaps

a key factor allowing a population of bears to survive in a country of 47 million people with 2,000 years or more of farming traditions. In the steep valleys of Somiedo, for example, the bears and people live in remarkably close proximity. It is a normal experience there to be standing by the road and scanning a hill where a bear and her cub were seen the previous morning, just up the slope from a farmhouse.

The frustrating irregular rise and fall of a curtain of mist that intermittently covers the wooded scree slopes where a mother bear and three cubs are feeding on berries can add a sense of isolation (and is reminiscent of Scottish mountains too!). But then in the telescope is the unmistakable and amazing sight of an adult brown bear – big round ears and long nose, humped muscular shoulders and long powerful thickset limbs.

And all the time there is the tinkle of bells on the cattle, wandering freely in the same hillsides.

Conflicts between bears and human interests are scarce, but not unknown. The most frequent problem is destruction of beehives: 26 out of 30 confirmed incidents of bear attacks on human interests in Cantabria in 2001-05, and 46% of damage in Asturias. In Asturias 14.3% of damage was to fruit trees (mainly cherry trees), reflecting the bears’ fondness for fruit. There have been incidents of attacks on livestock (sheep in the Picos and cattle in the western mountains), but there is evidence that the bears were mainly taking animals that were already dead. The Fundación Oso Pardo (Brown Bear Foundation, FOP) is a partnership which has produced guidelines for the

co-existence of human activities with a wild bear population. Any risks of direct conflict with people (and risk of disturbance to the bears too) is carefully managed by the local rangers. Bear patrols are undertaken by people from the areas where the bears live, and include surveillance and monitoring. Other FOP activities include education, research, and collaboration with hunting interests. A habitat programme involves stewardship agreements, including ownership of 14 highquality forests, 114 pastures, and planting more than 48,000 wild fruit trees. Three public information centres have been established in the Cantabrian Mountains, as well as one in the Pyrenees.

Spain has a remarkable natural wild heritage. Despite continued trapping and hunting to reduce numbers, wolves also survive. The bears are now totally protected.

Future prospects for the bears are improving with efforts to establish linked networks of suitable habitat, to allow the two isolated populations to eventually link up and hopefully reduce the risks of genetic degeneration that can occur with isolated populations.

Brown bear and fruit tree: the emblem of Madrid.

“It is estimated that some 150-200 Cantabrian brown bears survive in the wild.”

Further Reading

Fundación Oso Pardo (2008), El Oso Cantábrico.

Fundación Oso Pardo (www.fundacionosopardo. org) Julian Sykes Wildlife (www.juliansykeswildlife. com)

A map showing the two main centres of population for Cantabrian bears; the western population includes Somiedo. © Fundación Oso Pardo

Cantabrian brown bear, Somiedo. © Fundación Oso Pardo

Beavers & Bears

Beavers on the horizon Róisín Campbell-Palmer, Royal Zoological Society of Scotland; Simon Jones, Scottish Wildlife Trust

‘Rewilding’ can be “Beavers create viewed as a loaded aquatic environments term – capturing public imagination which are dynamic and receiving serious debate, in nature, and their academic yet representing a that is largely activities can provide concept viewed as impractical by many landowners a wide range of and eyed with ecological benefits.” suspicion by some communities in remote, highland areas fearful of a future wave of people clearances. Rewilding ranges from the encouragement of wildlife in derelict urban areas to the restoration of formally extinct yet native species.

One ‘agent’ of rewilding has already been hard at work in a few corners of Britain, and may yet prove to be a powerful force for ecosystem change in the coming years. The Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber) has been proactively restored across Europe to much of its former native range. Beavers create aquatic environments which are dynamic in nature, and their activities can provide a wide range of ecological benefits including species richness, composition, and habitat creation.

In Britain the return of the beaver has been controversial. In 1998 Scottish Natural Heritage held a public consultation to gather attitudes to beaver reintroduction in Scotland. Whilst the majority of people favoured reintroduction, there were concerns and opposition from others relating to detrimental effects on agriculture, forestry and fishing. This consultation resulted in SNH proposing a time-limited trial reintroduction, an application for which was turned down by the Scottish Government in 2005.

However, a subsequent joint licence application by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and Scottish Wildlife Trust, in 2007, was

successful. The Scottish Beaver Trial began with the release of 11 imported individuals, from Norway, into an unfenced trial site in Knapdale Forest. The environmental and economic impact of these animals and their activities have been independently monitored by a range of scientists co-ordinated by SNH over five years, and concluded in May 2014.

In general the debates surrounding beaver reintroduction in Britain tend to be polarised, with those in favour arguing for the importance of beavers’ ability to restore native wetlands and wildlife through habitat modification. Those opposed highlight that beaver activity can cause potentially expensive damage to agriculture, forestry and wider landscape infrastructures. Beaver dams can temporarily block fish movement in narrow watercourses during low-flow conditions, and their silttrapping effects can potentially lead to the silting up of some spawning grounds.

Experiences of beaver reintroduction in Europe have demonstrated that their initial arrival is commonly welcomed as long as the impact of their activities is confined to a small area of land and only felt by a restricted group such as farmers, foresters or water authorities. During this initial phase of colonisation, beavers select the most favourable sites, typically larger rivers and lochs, where dam building activity is rare. As beaver populations grow, however, successive animals are forced to occupy less optimal habitats in minor water courses or human-engineered environments.

These sub-optimal habitats often require modification by the beavers to provide the colony with more favourable living conditions, including damming to increase

water levels for protection of lodges and access to feeding sites.

It is usually at this stage that the enthusiasm for their presence is replaced by hostility.

Experience from Europe has also shown that as beaver numbers rise, population management will inevitably be required. The development of buffer zones (10-20 metres) around freshwater habitats (where 90% of beaver activity takes place) is often proposed to reduce human-beaver conflicts. This long-term strategy will, however, not always be practicable where flood banks exist, in artificial and/ or heavily modified and managed water bodies, or where land is considered too valuable. Therefore, the only management solution to limit beavers to particular areas is through removal via trapping and relocation or selective culling.

Although potentially unpalatable in Britain, hunting has been demonstrated in Scandinavia to be a flexible and cheaper management option in maintaining healthy populations of this species. Many other successful management techniques such as dam mitigation and deterrent devices have also been developed.

Any future programme of beaver management in Britain would be an evolving process as population numbers grew. Any beaver management plan would have to be adapted to the social and economic situation in Britain, as well as reflecting the relevant European and UK legislation covering this ‘keystone’ species. It should also be site specific and must be demonstrably acceptable to both landowners and the wider society.

The Scottish Government is expected to make a final decision on the future of beavers in Scotland by late 2015.

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Nature Needs Half: A Vision and Practice Vance G Martin, President, The WILD Foundation

Imagine our planet shared equally and equitably by people and nature, a world in which nature has ample space to exist and evolve, and people enjoy a healthy lifestyle that allows such a world to thrive. The values in this society are based on reciprocity, or partnership, between humankind and nature, rather than a world based on a one-way system, from natural storehouse to human well-being to the landfill.

Welcome to Nature Needs Half™ (NNH), both a vision and a common-sense, practical approach to living on an increasingly crowded planet. NNH is based on stateof-the-art scientific analysis and time-tested traditional knowledge and wisdom. Its goal is to ensure that enough wild areas of land and water are protected and interconnected (usually at least about half of any given eco-region) to maintain nature’s life-supporting systems and the diversity of life on Earth, to support human health and prosperity, and to secure a bountiful, beautiful legacy of resilient, wild nature. NNH requires a shift in our thinking – to recognize that we are part of nature, not separate from it.

The size of a natural area is directly linked to its ability to maintain high-functioning, biological processes. Depending on the type and location of the specific ecosystem or area of land or water, this threshold is roughly half of the original, pre-industrial extent. Below this threshold, nature struggles to provide life-support, or ‘ecological services’ such as clean air and water, climate control, temperature moderation, biodiversity, wildlife habitat, recreational areas, and more.

But it’s not only about science, as important as that may be. Other values help frame our thoughts and inform our actions. Traditional cultures around the world are based on an ethic of reciprocity, of respecting and giving back to the Earth that supports us. In more formal religious teachings – such as Buddhism, The Society of Friends (Quakers), and others – a guiding principle is that of ‘Right Relationship’, through which one aligns personal behaviour to honour all life. NNH is advocate for both

science and reciprocity.

How do we protect and interconnect half of the Earth’s lands and seas?

The good news is that Nature Needs Half is as achievable as it is necessary; examples of an ‘NNH world’ abound. It’s a global vision that can be achieved locally, at all scales.

For big scale, look at North America. One of the oldest practical projects is the Yellowstone to Yukon project (Y2Y), where a diverse team of conservationists, ranchers, planners, and wildlife lovers are stitching together a massive ecological corridor from the southern edge of the Yellowstone region in Northwest Wyoming, right up to the Northern Yukon. In the south-eastern corner of the US, Nokuse Plantation

is the biggest private preserve and the core area of the biggest restoration project east of the Mississippi. Driven by M C Davis, a private businessman, this ambitious project aims to create a 160-mile, east-west corridor of ‘rewilded’ long-leaf pine habitat.

Across Canada’s boreal north, one of the greatest forests in the world is the subject of both the highly-destructive tar sands petroleum production operation of the Canadian government, and also the location of major conservation efforts by a wide range of protagonists. First Nations are active in creating huge parks, such as the Nahanni National Park,

expanded a few years ago to now be one of the largest national parks in the world, at over 30,050km2.

Further east, the Quebec Government just announced its intention to protect 50% of its northern boreal forest, some 600,000km2.

“…we are part of nature, not separate from it.”

Large land- and seascapes are critical to our future, but one of the strengths of Nature Needs Half is that it can be applied at all scales, in any jurisdiction, and under any ownership regime. Boulder County, northwest of Denver, is 62% protected; the municipality of Hong Kong is 42% protected (believe it or not!); the nation of Bhutan is 52% protected and connected; the Pacific Oceanscape is a consortium of 15 Island Nations protecting 40 million square kilometres of South Pacific oceans. And it goes on.

Nature Needs Half is not alone, with similar initiatives emerging to form a movement. The esteemed biologist at Harvard, Professor E O Wilson, has endorsed the idea for many years, and is currently consolidating it as Half Earth. The Zoological Society of London’s programme is called Space for Nature.

Nothing less than bold vision and committed action at all levels is the formula to turn around the juggernaut of ill-conceived and/ or poorly implemented human development. Nature Needs Half is a simple and direct truth… we can live with the Earth much better than we can live on it.

Young grizzly bear, Katmai National Park and Preserve.

See www.wild.org, natureneedshalf. org, and y2y.net for more information.

WWI Geographers

Christmas Greetings from the Salonika Army Kenneth Maclean FRSGS

© Edinburgh University Library, Special Collections Department, E 2010.39

“The 1:20,000 Mirsla extract illustrates the wartime landscape of the Struma Valley, and indicates some surveying difficulties.”

This WWI Christmas card was drawn by Alan Grant Ogilvie (1887-1954). In 1931, Ogilvie was appointed to Scotland’s first Chair of Geography at Edinburgh University; in December 1916, however, he was serving as a Captain in the Royal Field Artillery, based in Salonika, the GHQ of the British Salonika Army. The card is tucked inside his Record of Service Book, a fragment of the collection of his diaries, sketch books and other memorabilia housed in Edinburgh University Library.

In the top left corner, Britain is sketched; from there, “Christmas Greetings from the Salonika Army” splays towards the rugged relief of Macedonia, depicted in one of Ogilvie’s characteristic physiographic diagrams. How many such cards were sent by Ogilvie is unknown, but it must have been a poignant time, when the serviceman’s thoughts turned to the security and intimacy of home and place.

After service in France, Ogilvie was posted as Map Officer in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean, affording opportunities to enhance surveying and map-making skills acquired as undergraduate, postgraduate, and member of the OTC at Oxford. Initially, he was appointed to GHQ Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on the then Greek island of Imbros, a strategic staging post for the Gallipoli invasion. From January 1916 until March 1918, Ogilvie served in Salonika, a campaign relatively little known compared to the Western front.

It was planned that British troops would fight alongside the French and support hardpressed Serbians against numerically superior Bulgarian and Turkish troops. By advancing up the Struma Valley, British operations aimed to divert enemy resources from FrancoSerbian offensives. Up-to-date, detailed topographical map surveys were essential: (i) to identify sites for trenches, battery positions and probable routes for enemy advance; and (ii) to improve roads (often rough mule tracks), construct bridges and situate field camps and hospitals. Surveying, printing and distributing maps was carried out by a topographical section of the Royal Engineers – No 8 Field Survey Company RE, commanded

by Major (later Lt Col) H Wood.

Initially, Ogilvie was OC Printing Section at GHQ, Salonika; latterly, second-in-command of the Survey Section, a rank involving liaison with French and Serb allies and prompt dispatch of maps to London.

Part of the RSGS map collection includes 1:20,000 War Office maps of the Salonika front. For British cartographers, this map scale was uncommon, but they were produced to co-ordinate with existing French 1:20,000 sheets. The 1:20,000 Mirsla extract illustrates the wartime landscape of the Struma Valley, and indicates some surveying difficulties.

Initially a 1:250,000 British War Office map was used. It was derived from an earlier 1:200,000 Austro-Hungarian General Staff map covering south-eastern Europe. It was indispensable but full of errors, notably in southern Macedonia; according to the Official History of the War: Military Operations Macedonia (1935), British officers were informed by the innkeeper at Skala Stavros that “the Austrian surveyor often sent peasants to pace the distances between villages while he sat over a bottle of wine”. Any accurate enlargement to workable scales,

such as 1:20,000 and 1:50,000, that would co-ordinate with French surveys, was impossible.

A new survey was required.

Creating a fresh triangulation net was hampered by terrain, poor communications and scrub vegetation. There was also a lack of staff experienced in plane-tabling, a situation solved by drafting experienced Survey of India surveyors, and using aerial photographs to outline the disposition of enemy trenches.

Severe wintry conditions, summer drought, and malaria, took their toll. One malarial blackspot was the lower Struma Valley where marsh and swamps became breeding grounds for mosquitoes in summer. As the Struma marked a key line of defence, it was impossible to withdraw any large number of troops.

Despite such difficulties, the Official History of the War: Military Operations Macedonia notes that British map-making, initially handicapped compared to the more efficient French, caught up by 1918 in terms of accuracy, and was ahead in clarity and draughtsmanship.

Regardless of the demands of Ogilvie’s military service, he still found time to research and write articles, for example Notes on the geography of Imbros (1916) for the RGS; while experience gained in Macedonia studying its physiography and settlement patterns assisted his later contributions to the WWII Admiralty Handbooks on Greece. His geographical training and know-how as Maps Officer saw him appointed in 1918 as a member of the Geographical Section of the General Staff, participating at the Versailles Peace Conference as a cartographic advisor to the British delegation. For these services, he was awarded the OBE (Military Division) in 1921.

The

Geographer

18-19

Winter 2014 -15

WWI affected communities everywhere; the RSGS community was no exception.

Alastair Geddes (1891-1918) Alastair Geddes was the son of Professor Patrick Geddes, a famous polymath, planner and educationalist, and an RSGS Council Member during the 1890s.

Alastair joined the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) in July 1915, and was posted to No 6 Kite Balloon Section RNAS in the autumn. He was promoted to the rank of Major in the Royal Flying Corps, Balloon Division, a highly dangerous role that involved sitting in balloons taking aerial drawings or photos of the enemy lines, but open to sniper fire and attack by fixed-wing planes. The average flying life of a Royal Flying Corps pilot was just 18 hours in the Arras region.

In April 1918, whilst up in the observation balloon, Alastair survived an attack by an enemy fighter plane, when he and his companion were able to parachute to safety after their balloon was destroyed by fire. Rather ironically after having survived attacks on his balloon, he was killed by a shell while on the ground as bad weather had prevented him from flying.

As the most senior British kite balloon officer to be killed in action, Alastair was awarded the Military Cross and the Cross of the Legion of Honour.

Patrick Alexander Blair (1879-1917) Patrick Alexander Blair was the youngest son of Alexander Blair (Sheriff of Edinburgh). After studying law and accountancy at Edinburgh University he became an accountant, and was a senior partner with Macandrew and Blair. In October 1909 he was elected Treasurer of the RSGS, and in the same year he was promoted to Captain in the Territorial Battalion.

Patrick was called up to fight in August 1914, and was continuously on active service from February 1915. He received the Military Cross in 1917 for an act of exemplary gallantry during active operation against the enemy. He died soon after receiving the Cross, in the unsuccessful second battle of the Scarpe. The Scarpe was part of the battle of Arras, in which commonwealth forces led by Field Marshall Sir Douglas Haig (himself an RSGS medallist in 1919) tried to force the German line, and get them on the run. This was done in part to draw forces away to aid a massive French offensive which was attacked further south. The battle was hindered by the Russian forces being unable to get close enough to also attack from the north, and by the withdrawal of German troops to the Hindenberg Line.

Glen Affric & Glenfeshie

Rewilding Scotland Alan Watson Featherstone, Founder and Executive Director, Trees for Life

“In the last two or three decades, considerable efforts have been made to restore and expand native forests.”

Rewilding is a relatively new term that describes the return of degraded ecosystems to a state of ecological health and dynamic balance, which are self-sustaining into the future without the need for ongoing human management or intervention. In a Scottish context, it is primarily applicable to areas outwith human settlements and productive agriculture or forestry, in the Highlands and Southern Uplands.

Due to past deforestation, nutrient depletion and subsequent overgrazing, those regions are mostly tree-less, and in the Highlands many areas are scarred by peat hags – sections of land where erosion has exposed the underlying peat, leaving an open sore or wound in the landscape.

Vegetation is unable to recolonise these degraded areas because of overgrazing by excessive numbers of deer and sheep. As a result, many of our landscapes have become museum-like, frozen in a state of minimal biological productivity, and the woodlands that have survived are mostly ‘geriatric’ ones, consisting only of old trees, which are dying off without being replaced.

Rewilding seeks to address this through three strategies: the reestablishment of healthy vegetation communities; the return of species missing from the ecosystem; and the restoration of key ecological

processes such as succession, natural disturbance and predatorprey relationships.

In the last two or three decades, considerable efforts have been made to restore and expand native forests, either through the use of fenced exclosures, or by reducing deer numbers to a very low density by greatly increased culls. The results of such initiatives are apparent in many sites, with a new generation of trees and a healthy understorey of plants such as blaeberry becoming established.

Rewilding is also underway for peat bogs, such as in the Flow Country, where the plantations of nonnative conifers from the 1980s are being felled, and the sites restored to natural mire conditions, with drainage ditches being blocked etc.

Once healthy vegetation communities become reestablished, succession from one community to another can occur again, and further elements of ecosystem recovery take place spontaneously. Young trees and plants support insects, whose larvae feed on the leaves. They attract increased populations of spiders, insectivorous birds and small mammals, which, in turn, are eaten by raptors and terrestrial predators, including pine martens, foxes and wildcats.

At this stage, the rewilding process is well underway, but further steps

Naturally-regenerating birches and heather inside a fence at Athnamulloch in Glen Affric contrast with overgrazed grass and stumps outside.

are still required for ecosystems to return to full health and ongoing sustainability. These include the reinstatement of missing species, ranging from wood ants (which have a short dispersal distance, and therefore are missing from many isolated woodlands, both old remnants and newly-established ones), to large mammals such as the wild boar, Eurasian lynx and wolf.

The re-establishment of healthy populations of raptors such as the sea eagle, osprey and red kite are success stories for rewilding, as is the return of European beavers, both through the official reintroduction at Knapdale in Argyll, and through the ‘unofficial’ population in the Tay catchment.

As a keystone species in freshwater ecosystems, the beavers are already providing tangible benefits for other species.

A growing body of evidence from rewilding projects in other countries is showing that apex predators play a crucial top-down role in the regulation of ecosystems. While the reintroduction of the wolf or lynx is often proposed as a means of reducing the excessive numbers of deer in Scotland, their main impact is likely to be felt in a different way, through their role in disturbing herbivore populations, and causing the animals to move more frequently, thereby enabling further vegetation recovery.

This forms one relatively smallscale example of the missing ecological process of natural disturbance. Other examples include infrequent events such as wildfires, windthrow of trees, and flooding, all of which create heterogeneity and diversity in a landscape. Attempts to control flooding and prevent wildfires illustrate the ongoing efforts of people to manage nature, and for rewilding to be fully implemented those occasional disturbance events need to occur again.

Rewilding represents a counterpoint to human attempts to control nature, and it will only become fully successful if we are willing to step back from the current drive to utilise every part of the land for human material gain, and let nature, and natural processes, prevail in some areas again.

The

Geographer

20-21

Winter 2014 -15

Rewilding Glenfeshie A conversation with Thomas MacDonell, Director of Conservation & Forestry, Wildland Limited

Rewilding is not about going back ten thousand years to the last Ice Age, but is about a ‘future natural’ allowing the land to achieve its full ecological potential. It’s about developing the land for the future in the most sustainable way for the land, the animals, and the people who live on it.

Harmony between ecology and reality is a good way of putting it.

We want to be good custodians of the countryside, conserving and enhancing the things that we feel attached to at the moment. Humans are part of the ecosystem. I don’t think that the rewilding movement is suggesting that humans be removed. We are certainly not.

value of the land is its beauty. Mr Holch Povlsen told me that when he was a child his father took him to Scotland and he instantly loved the place, so when he was in a position to consider buying land he thought that Scotland was the place for him to try and do good work, to perhaps leave a legacy. Perhaps if a multinational company in Europe pumping CO2 could show that they had restored a peatbog or were growing the forest, and that was made a tax concession, that would add significant financial value to conservation and the land, whilst supporting further environmental projects without relying on subsidies.

Before I took this job, I was aware of the injustice to some of our native animals. I was a self-employed fencing contractor, and one winter I was working in an estate towards Torridon for Nature Conservancy Council (NCC), putting a fence around a Caledonian pinewood. We came back one morning to find a group of about 60 stags lying against our equipment, sheltering next to the fence. The deer were obviously ill, they could hardly stand or walk, and we were shooing them out of this exclosure that we were building, out of this last remnant of shelter that they had. It shocked me and I started to question, what is the logic behind this? When I said to Dick Balharry (who was working for NCC at the time) that this wasn’t right, much to my surprise he agreed, but said what they were doing was showing that if you stopped overgrazing on key areas then they would regenerate. That was my first taste of rewilding. I realised that the current model was fundamentally flawed. The moment that you need to put up a fence to exclude an animal, it just illustrates that you have too many of whatever it is on that side of the fence.

If we wish to expand and allow the translocation of animals to breed and mix, then we need to be thinking more strategically about wildlife corridors, which are a priority now for us. We are trying to initiate a wildlife corridor between Inverness-shire and Perthshire with owners of the other estates, and to be honest it is the owners of the other deer forests that are the biggest impediment now.

Compared to elsewhere in Europe, land in Scotland is considerably cheaper, about four times so, but it is also very beautiful and quite special. We don’t believe that the value of an estate is linked to how many deer are on it. For us, the

By reducing our deer numbers, and with no planting whatsoever, the woodland is sprinting as opposed to creeping up the hill. To more than double the woodland resource since 2006 is astonishing, and I hope it gives some comfort to people who are against what we are doing. I think everybody expected to be retired before we saw what we are seeing at the moment.

Regarding apex predators, I have a lot of sympathy towards lynx reintroduction. Studies would suggest that there is enough habitat for them in Scotland.

My own feeling would be that wolves are a step too far, but lynx would be a stepping-stone to considering wolves. If we didn’t have wolves back in Scotland, we could mimic that predatorprey cycle so that we could have a varying density of deer throughout, say, a 40-50 year cycle, which would give benefits to the sporting estates, but you would need to bring it back down in a period so that you could

allow the forest to regenerate.

That would be my personal vision for what we could do in the UK moving forward.

Maybe we are just progressing what Dick Balharry, Adam Watson, Dave Morris and the like did, taking that mantle and running with it. They have enlightened us to show us what is possible, and then we think, well what more can we do? It is an all-consuming thing, a passion.

In summary, our vision would be ‘healthy deer, healthy people, healthy environment’. No matter what though, I am very proud and honoured to have been given the opportunity, by Mr Holch Povlsen, to deliver our joint vision.

“Rewilding… is about a ‘future natural’ allowing the land to achieve its full ecological potential.”

© RSGS / Mike Robinson

RSGS Education

Share Your Meet Our Explorer!

Geography!

Do you have any images from holidays or fieldtrips you would like to share with us? What about some written work, picture of a wall display, or other geographical gem you would like to publish through The Geographer or through our social media? Perhaps there’s a question you would really like to find out the answer to, or you would like some advice to help you with your studies?

Maybe you have a teaching resource or idea, or revision tips you would like to share with others?

If you studied Geography years ago, do you have a copy of your exam paper? If so, we want to hear from you!

Please email your ideas and images to rachel.hay@rsgs.org, our Education Officer.

In October, 16 pupils from Collace Primary (P1-7) visited us to find out more about explorers, as they had been studying Scott and Shackleton at school. We surprised them by asking Craig Mathieson, our Explorer-in-Residence, to await their arrival in our Explorers’ Room, and he enthralled them all with his exciting tales of adventure in Greenland and Antarctica. A second session with our Education Officer saw them thinking about leadership and teamwork skills, or drawing pictures inspired by what they had heard from Craig.

“Thank you for sharing your mindboggling polar exploration stories with us,” said Reuben Whiteside.

“I was fascinated to learn about how anyone can go to the South Pole because I thought you needed certain qualifications to go,” said Nathan Preston.

RSGS Education RSGS members supported lots of exciting educational work between August and December 2014.

•W e welcomed ten different schools and one university on visits to the RSGS headquarters.

• 279 school pupils visited the Fair Maid’s House.

• A further 115 young people were involved in RSGS’s outreach educational projects.

• 15 people recreated Hugh Miller’s 1844 ‘Voyage of the Betsey’ around the Isle of Eigg, and encouraged primary pupils across Scotland to learn more about Scotland’s geology and landscapes.

• 17 school pupils enjoyed a climbing session with Leo Houlding, one of the best climbers in the world.

• We delivered the Discovery-level John Muir Award to 23 pupils, and contributed towards 11 Perth High pupils’ John Muir Awards.

• We worked with the Field Studies Council to offer a CPD session for eight Environmental Science teachers.

A huge thank you to our dedicated team of Education Volunteers who work alongside our Education Officer to design and deliver sessions at the RSGS’s headquarters. A special mention goes to John Lewington and Freda Ross for the huge amount of time they have spent showing groups around our visitor centre: their enthusiasm and amusing anecdotes inspire and entertain children, teachers and RSGS staff alike!

Plans for 2015 include a Scotland Rocks Conference 2015, more school visits, more CPD sessions… watch this space for updates.

We couldn’t do it without you. Thank you for your ongoing support!

What Geography Means To Me

An insight into the life of a working geographer

Colin Morrison Information Manager, Digital Scotland, The Scottish Government

G

eography is the interaction between people and the world around them. It is the thing that, often unknowingly, we all consider when we make decisions such as where to live, where to work, where to relax, and how to move between these places each day.

There is a staggering amount of information online to help us make these decisions, a great deal of which is overtly geographic in nature.

I was part of the last generation to grow up without Google Maps. At high school I recall several hours of Sixth-Year Studies Geography spent using coloured pencils to denote areas of interest on an OS Landline map for my final project.

It may have been the realisation that, even at age 17, colouring-in was a valid academic pursuit which pushed me to embark upon a BSc Honours degree in Geography at the University of Edinburgh.

After graduating I began work as

a demographic research assistant for Stirling Council, where I realised the power of Geographical Information Science (GIS) in bringing together unrelated spatial datasets to analyse trends, find patterns, and generate new information and insight. This led me back to the University of Edinburgh to undertake their MSc in GIS. Upon graduating with my MSc, I got a job as a GIS Analyst with the Scottish Government, where I was afforded the opportunity to apply spatial analysis techniques to help answer a huge variety of Scottish Government policy questions, from calculating travel times and crime rates to inform deprivation indices, to analysing areas of flood risk, land use, biodiversity and social inequality.

I was asked to start work on mapping access to broadband services in Scotland, which led to my current job, working with Digital Scotland to collect and analyse information in order to generate insight into the ability of communities to access digital

services through fixed and mobile technology.

There is an intrinsically geographic element to availability of digital services – the ability to access is determined by the location of the user in relation to the enabling infrastructure. Use of geographic information can therefore make a significant contribution to the Scottish Government’s ongoing projects which will extend access to communities which would not have benefited through commercial network deployment alone.

Digital connectivity is an essential component supporting modern life. For businesses and social enterprises, it enhances productivity and drives innovation. In rural communities and fragile areas, it has the potential to boost economic development, retain young people, and attract new residents.

Essentially, it also facilitates access to the wealth of online information and tools which allow individuals and communities to make informed decisions about the geographies which affect them.

The

Geographer

Hugh Miller and the Cruise of the Betsey :

22-23

Winter 2014 -15

on a voyage of discovery

Martin Gostwick, The Friends of Hugh Miller; Joyce Gilbert, RSGS And so we board Leader at the North Pier in Oban. Built in 1892, Leader is a handsome ketch, and at 120ft long is at least twice as big as the Free Church yacht Betsey. She will carry a crew of four, and 14 passengers, compared with Betsey’s two crew, and one passenger, Hugh.

We set sail for Eigg, which is to be the principal focus of the whole trip, made famous by Miller, his contemporaries and their successors, for its landmark Sgurr ridge, its Singing Sands, and the remains of a great reptile, the Plesiosaur. Hugh also preserved for posterity the appalling hardships of the Eiggachs (islanders) under cruel landowners.

It is decided by consensus that we will begin by circumnavigating the entire island aboard Leader, and so we trace from on board, and in reverse, Hugh’s epic walk in a single day, which he accomplished with John Stewart, geologising all the way. Finally, in late afternoon, we are dwarfed under the impossibly imposing, all but perpendicular Sgurr ridge, a pitchstone colossus, called the glass mountain because of its lustrous black rock, resting on a Jurassic pine forest. We anchor at almost the exact same spot at which Hugh Miller moored.

We are greeted at the pier by one of the greatest geologists of his time, Professor John Hudson, aged 82, still looking hale and hearty, and with over 50 excursions to Eigg sites behind him over the years.

He is leading the onshore party’s field trips, jointly with Edinburgh Geological Society’s Angus Miller, who is also at the pier.

We are immediately excited by the island’s welcome sign and display board proclaiming ‘Big Green Footsteps’. This refers to perhaps the single greatest success of the

“…we are dwarfed under the impossibly imposing, all but perpendicular Sgurr ridge.”

Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust, the collective which famously and triumphantly bought out Eigg in 1997.

Hugh Miller would be astounded to observe the island’s transformation from poverty, depopulation and inexorable decline, to the forwardlooking, thriving community to be seen today.

It is a most perfect evening. There is a community ceilidh at the Glebe Barn, at which the legendary tradition-bearer Essie Stewart is to preside with storyteller Claire Hewitt, Gaelic singer Kate Langhorne, and a poet, Norrie Bissell of Luing, Argyll. Norrie’s poetry, known as geopoetics, makes extraordinary connections between landscape and nature and how we experience it. Later, back on the boat, a big fat full moon smiles down on us.

We set sail the following morning and, in no time, anything between 50 and 100 common dolphins are with us for the journey to Loch Sunart. We go ashore across a bog and wild woodland, to ascend a firm forestry track and climb up to a promontory. Simon explains a geological ‘unconformity’ in the cliffs above us: we stand on ancient basement rocks, the Moines, originally formed as sediments about 900 million years ago and then repeatedly deformed and metamorphosed. Above are basalt lavas erupted a mere 65 million years ago; they lie across the planed-off ends of the Moine strata, a great erosion surface that was flooded over by the lavas.

The next day we retrace our course back into the Sound of Mull, making for Loch Spelvie. In the bright sunshine the peaks are

In September 2014, The Friends of Hugh Miller (FHM) and the RSGS chartered a traditional sailing boat, to follow the journey of discovery taken by Hugh Miller in the summer of 1844 on the Betsey. On board was a mix of geologists, geographers, artists, writers, ecologists, storytellers and musicians, aged 18 to 68. Geology, landscape, people and story were at the heart of the journey.

See cruiseofthebetsey.wordpress.com for more information. Contact joyce@scottishgeodiversityforum.org to register interest in the 2015 voyage.

grey pinnacles, in the foothills green swathes abound in lush flora, and the water is a Mediterranean blue.

Simon shows us, on deck, a strikingly coloured British Geological Survey map of south-eastern Mull, explaining the mapping process which involves a lot of inference and deduction based on previous experience and the surface features. After supper, it is time for one more moonlit ceilidh. Mairi’s fiddle, Kenny and Barney’s guitars, Claire’s harp and bodhran, fire up the on-deck dancing.

All too soon we are returning to the ‘home’ port, Oban. Films have been made, and recordings taken.

Primary and secondary pupils have been following our journey while piloting linked ‘Betsey’ resource materials. A Betsey reunion is planned… and, importantly, Leader has been chartered for a second voyage of geological discovery in summer 2015.

RSGS and FHM would like to thank our partners the Scottish Geodiversity Forum, Lochaber Geopark, and Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust. We are also grateful for financial support from Scotia Exploration, and Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh Geological Societies.

Collecting pitchstone at the Sgurr.

Entering Loch Sunart.

Marine Rewilding

On rewilding Scotland’s seas: ecological bounce-back benefits all Calum Duncan, Scotland Programme Manager, Marine Conservation Society things first. Our “[Rewilding] can be First organisation supports achieved more simply human use of the sea, sensitively at sea than on land.” including located development

Cushion star.

Compass jellyfish, Taran Mor, Harris. © Calum Duncan, MCS

and sustainable fishing. However, we believe our ecological footprint is too high and that larger swathes of our sea need to be as natural as possible, whether we call this ‘rewilding’ or not. This can be achieved more simply at sea than on land.

No planting or costly species re-introductions needed, simply protect more of the seabed from the most damaging activities, namely scallop dredging and bottom trawling, and both larvae which can disperse for hundreds of miles and expansion of adjacent remnant living reefs can do the rest. Not only is this good for biodiversity, it is an insurance policy to support our seas generously providing food, carbon storage, nutrient cycling, storm protection, energy, enjoyment, and even new medicines, long into the future.

Under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010 that we helped to secure, 30 new nature conservation Marine Protected Areas (ncMPAs) totalling 12% of the Scottish sea region (which extends to the limit of the continental shelf) were announced on 24th July 2014, to almost double the required marine protected area network, the statutory marine planning system is emerging, and Ministers and public bodies have a duty to protect and, where appropriate, enhance the health of Scotland’s seas. But what does all this actually mean for the ‘wildness’ of our sea and seabed?

Any protected area is just a label until management measures are put in place. Although on designation the bar for licensing new activities was set higher, voluntary fisheries measures, though a start, were only put in place for tiny portions of three MPAs where features had been set to ‘recover’. Following a breach of a voluntary closure in South Arran MPA, measures for

maerl, a pink calcareous freeliving algae, are now statutory with the issuing of the first Marine Conservation Order under the new Act. As I write, a consultation is underway on how to manage fisheries in the 11 inshore ncMPAs (including South Arran) and nine Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) deemed most at-risk from fishing, but we are concerned about the lack of ambition for many of the sites.

So how wild are Scotland’s seas? Arguably, not very. An assessment by Marine Scotland for the Scottish MPA project showed that most of Scotland’s continental shelf has been modified. Whilst there were large extents of area considered Least Damaged / Most Natural in deeper waters beyond the continental shelf break, there is growing concern about deepwater trawling impacts, where the low fecundity and slow growth and maturation rates in cold, deep waters mean fishing is more akin to mining. Indeed, independent scientists from the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) concluded “it is unlikely that there remain any ‘pristine’… ecosystems on the Scottish continental shelf” and that bottom trawls and dredges were the “most… significant cause of ecosystem degradation in coastal seas”. The Scottish Government’s Marine Atlas corroborates, cataloguing concern for the health of all intertidal and most subtidal habitats to the continental shelf limits. Declines in some commercial fish stocks, seabird populations, harbour seals and sharks, skates and rays, provide further evidence of the impact of overfishing and climate change.

Contrary to popular misconception, global studies show that marine protected areas with the highest levels of protection, often called marine reserves, give marine life the greatest lift in temporal, not tropical, waters (though significant in both), boosting marine biomass five-fold,

including larger, more fecund fish and shellfish. Even where not established for that reason, reserves can provide a secondary fisheries boost, with vessels ‘fishing the line’ for overspill. We must be careful not to promise sites established for nature conservation will deliver fisheries benefits, but there will be cases where greater productivity is likely to flow. Scotland’s first Community Marine Conservation Area in north Lamlash Bay, effectively a No-Take Zone centred on damaged maerl beds, “appears to be promoting the recovery of scallops, lobster, fish and seafloor habitats” after just four years. Meanwhile down the Irish Sea, scallop densities in Isle of Man closed areas have increased almost ten-fold in eight years to 22 per 100m2.

At a larger scale, a study in the ‘Windsock’ fisheries closed area, now the West Shetland Shelf MPA, showed an average 78% greater catch weight of cod and other species, particularly of larger size classes, inside compared to outside. A growing scientific consensus suggests at least 30% of our seas should be highly protected.

So, whatever we call the move to get more untrammelled seabed to help build resilient marine ecosystems, supporting in turn a healthy, just society living within environmental limits (true sustainable development), we are currently falling far short. Suggesting as it does the exclusion of people, the ‘rewilding’ term may put some off, particularly in fragile coastal communities, but we believe they and all will benefit from larger, wilder places at sea, through increased well-being and longterm socio-economic prosperity.

To support ambitious management of Scotland’s marine protected areas, please visit www.savescottishseas.org and #DontTakeTheP.

The

Geographer

24-25

Winter 2014 -15

Stop scraping the bottom…

Bernard Picton I am a diver and marine biologist.

I helped survey the shallow seabed around the coast of Northern Ireland in the 1980s and the Republic of Ireland in the 1990s. Rocky areas are in general not heavily impacted by man’s activities, though they are degraded now everywhere by increased siltation compared with 40 years ago. Lobster and crab populations everywhere are badly impacted by fishing, and probably this has resulted in changes to the natural state which we cannot detect because of a lack of fully protected areas.

The main reason everywhere is degraded is primarily due to stirring up of bottom sediments and removal of the natural populations of hydroids, bryozoans and sponges which characterise these areas before fishing with bottom scraping gear begins. I have only rarely seen areas of flat seabed in this pristine state in the UK. In 1975 I started work with the Ulster Museum in Belfast and saw parts of the bottom of Strangford Lough. Large areas were mud, covered with a carpet of horse mussels. On top of the horse mussels were sponges, hydroids, variable scallops, and bryozoans. Between the mussels were thousands of worms and small molluscs.

allows safe settlement and initial growth of the scallops. It is now 27 years after the trawling and there has been no recovery, and the remaining small areas of horse mussels have largely disappeared. The dead shells are colonised annually by sea squirts, but there is no recovery of the complex ecosystem which was there in the early 1980s (and probably since the ice sheets retreated and the climate stabilised thousands of years ago).

The Northern Ireland government has spent several million pounds trying to restore this ecosystem as it is in breach of a European directive to protect this very habitat.

I would therefore support proposals for site-wide prohibition of bottom-towed, mobile fishing gear from the following MPAs: Treshnish Isles SAC and Luce Bay SAC (both option 1); Loch Creran ncMPA/ SAC and East Mingulay SAC (both option 2); Loch Laxford SAC, St Kilda SAC, Noss Head ncMPA, Wyre and Rousay ncMPA, and Sanday SAC (all option 1, only option).

None of the proposed management approaches in the sites below will adequately support the conservation and

In the late 1980s these mussel beds were trawled by a fleet of scallop trawlers, taking queen scallops by the sackful. This went on for several months. In the aftermath I dived some of these areas and helped make a short film for the National Trust, called Scraping the Bottom (now on YouTube).

Fisheries scientists at the time claimed that the scallop populations would recover quickly, as queen scallops reach maturity in four or five years.

However, this assumes that the natural fauna of the seabed

recovery of the species and habitats to be protected, and so I think there should instead be a site-wide prohibition of bottomtowed, mobile fishing gear in these MPAs: Loch Sween ncMPA;

South Arran ncMPA; Upper Loch Fyne and Loch Goil ncMPA; Lochs Duich, Long and Alsh SAC and ncMPA; Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura ncMPA (including Loch Sunart ncMPA and Loch Sunart SAC); Small Isles ncMPA; and Wester Ross ncMPA. I strongly support marine protected areas (MPAs) in Scottish seas. It’s an historic opportunity to help reverse the declining health of our marine environment and make a real change for coastal communities and Scotland as a whole. MPAs, existing and new, need proper protection to ensure responsible stewardship of our shared resources.

The point has been made many times, and proven conclusively in New Zealand, that fully protected areas actually benefit fishing by acting as recruitment grounds for many species, which then spill out of the protected areas and replenish the stocks in much larger areas. It is only common sense to take the same approach in the sea as a farmer would take if he wanted pheasants, that is to provide habitat for the birds to breed by leaving pockets of woodland instead of converting everywhere to green, empty fields.

“It is now 27 years after the trawling and there has been no recovery.”

Bernard Picton is a renowned, now semiretired, diving marine biologist.

The photographs are from 2007, 20 years after a season of intensive fishing for queen scallops disrupted the natural horse mussel beds in Strangford Lough. After fishing efforts ceased, a government survey claimed that the area of the horse mussel bed habitat remained unchanged, based on survey results using sonar techniques. The report did not explain that the habitat now consisted of dead shells and fast-growing feather stars, instead of a carpet of living horse mussels covered with a protective blanket of stinging hydroids, toxic sponges and bristly bryozoans.

The remaining areas with horse mussels in Strangford Lough now consist of dead shells with a few live mussels, the volume of shell attesting to the previous abundance of living mussels and scallops in these areas. Starfish like the common starfish, Asterias rubens, pick off the few remaining horse mussels easily now that they are not protected by a covering of sponges and hydroids.

See www.ulsterwildlife. org/strangfordlough for more detail.

Book Club

A History of the 20th Century in 100 Maps

Lonely Planet’s Beautiful World

Tim Bryars and Tom Harper (The British Library Publishing Division, October 2014)

(Lonely Planet, October 2013) Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world’s leading travel guide publisher, with guidebooks to every destination on the planet.

The company’s mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.

The world is full of beautiful places, but we don’t see them every day, and sometimes we need to be reminded that they are there. This book presents nearly 200 stunning photographs of some of the world’s most extraordinary places, in a lavishly-produced hardback that offers a thought-provoking portrait of our world, and invites us to journey to the planet’s most magnificent places.

Feral George Monbiot (Penguin, May 2013)

The 20th century was a golden age of map-making, and maps permeated almost every aspect of daily life. It was a century overshadowed by war which was also marked by tremendous social and technological change to which millions of contemporary maps bear witness. Most were created for a specific and immediate purpose, and have never been reprinted or discussed, until now.

These 100 maps tell many stories, revealing changing social attitudes towards the unfamiliar and unconventional, from Jewish London at the turn of the century to women in the workplace, and from the Edwardian opium trade to gay London in the 1980s. The maps cover the peak of imperial pageantry as well as rapid post-war decolonisation, and they explore technological change from the expansion of the London Underground system to 1980s computer games.

The story of seas on Earth and other planets Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams (Oxford University Press, October 2014)

Making use of some remarkable scientific discoveries, Feral lays out a new, positive environmentalism, in which nature is allowed to find its own way. From the seas of north Wales, where he kayaks among feeding frenzies of dolphins and seabirds, to the forests of Eastern Europe, where lynx stalk and packs of wolves roam, George Monbiot shows how rewilding could repair the living planet, creating ecosystems in post-industrial nations as profuse and captivating as any around the world. Already, large wild animals are beginning to spread back across Europe, and fin whales, humpback whales and bluefin tuna are returning to the seas around Britain.

Oceans make up most of the surface of our blue planet. They may form just a sliver on the outside of the Earth, but they are very important, not only in hosting life, including the fish and other animals on which many humans depend, but in terms of their role in the Earth system, in regulating climate, and cycling nutrients. As climate change, pollution, and over-exploitation by humans puts this precious resource at risk, it is more important than ever that we understand and appreciate the nature and history of oceans.

There is much we still do not know about the story of the Earth’s oceans, and we are only just beginning to find indications of oceans on other planets.

R eader Offer - 20% discount Dirty Teaching: A Beginner’s Guide to Learning Outdoors Juliet Robertson (Independent Thinking Press, June 2014)

Offer ends 31st March 2015

Juliet Robertson offers tips and tricks to help any primary school teacher to kick-start or further develop their outdoor practice. One of the keys to a happy and creative classroom is getting out of it! Drawing on academic research, Juliet explains why learning outdoors is so beneficial, and provides plenty of activities to help integrate outdoor learning into teaching practice, providing a broad range of engaging outdoor experiences for students. Topics include forest schools, learning outside the classroom, outdoor education, nature activities, caring for the environment, play in schools, investigative play, urban outdoor activities, problem solving, creative thinking, and strategies for supporting curriculum objectives.

Readers of The Geographer can purchase Dirty Teaching for only £15.05 (RRP £16.99) with FREE postage.

To order, please phone Crown House Publishing on 01267 211880 or email learn@crownhouse.co.uk, quoting the reference ‘The Geographer Offer’.

Help us to make the connections between people, places and the planet.

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Ocean Worlds

Feral is the lyrical and gripping story of George Monbiot’s efforts to reengage with nature and discover a new way of living. He shows how, by restoring and rewilding our damaged ecosystems on land and at sea, we can bring wonder back into our lives.