Next month
Many who venture to the glens and mountains of the Scottish Highlands do so to immerse themselves in nature. Hoodwinked by beauty, however, they may have been sold short. Much of the Scottish Highlands was once coated in a rich blanket of trees that formed the ‘Great Forest of Caledonia’. Stretching some 15,000 square kilometres, the forest was the last great wilderness of the UK. In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, political pressure mounted on Highlanders to maximise productivity from the land. Massive deforestation resulted; sheep and cattle replaced much of the native forest and its fauna. With the loss of predatory control, popular deer estates could maintain dense populations of trophies to lure hunters. Since then, Scotland’s deer population has surged: red deer numbers increased from 150,000 in the 1960s to 400,000 by 2011. Nonnative sika and fallow deer numbers have reached 35,000. Together, they trim emerging tree saplings and maintain the dense covering of heather and scrub.
Only morsels of the great forests remain. One former deer estate north of Inverness is seeking to restore 23,000 acres of the damaged Scottish ecosystem. Some may have heard the name Paul Lister, painted by some media corners as the ‘wolf-man’ of Scotland. But, as
Geographical explores next month, his plot to restore the degraded ecosystem at Alladale Wilderness Reserve is rooted in more than divisive wolf reintroductions. In 2003, Lister launched a programme to restore portions of the forest, replanting trees, reintroducing lost species and restoring damaged carbon sinks. So far, more than one million trees have been planted. To protect tree saplings, Alladale have high deer culling targets. Many see this controversial use of the human hand in nature as contradictory to the ‘wilderness’ envisaged. But the team’s philosophy stretches deep into the future. One day, the succession of species and vegetation could be unhurried by the human hand.