£23m bid to recover Caledonia’s lost forest
IT was once a dense woodland that covered vast swathes of the country.
But centuries on from its near destruction by land clearing, conservationists have launched a £23million bid to restore part of the lost Caledonian Forest to its former glory.
Most of the woodland, once home to wolves and elks, disappeared hundreds of years ago to meet demand for timber and make space for agriculture.
Now the remains of the forest are the focus of an international project aimed at restoring Europe’s most threatened environments.
The Endangered Landscapes Programme (ELP) will plough millions of pounds into restoring the ancient woodland.
The ELP says the Cairngorms Connect programme ‘will restore the Caledonian pine forest to its natural limit, reinstate drained wetlands, naturalise rivers and revive huge tracts of peatland, improving the area for wildlife, including eagles, wildcats, pine martens and otters’.
As well as the money donated by the ELP, further funds for the project will be provided by the RSPB, Forestry Enterprise Scotland, Scottish Natural Heritage and Wildland Limited.
RSPB spokesman Jeremy Roberts said: ‘The aim of the Scottish project is to connect up the fragments of Caledonian Forest with land that is no longer degraded – as it is at present – so that threatened species can communicate and move around.’