Wilding back better: Experts on protecting our natural heritage
From the high-tops of the Highlands and the lush straths below to the rugged coastlines and beautiful beaches, Scotland’s spectacular wild places are so familiar that, without care, they can go unnoticed.
However, experts fear our countryside is changing far more than we realise – and for the worse – as wildlife and plants are lost and the countryside denuded. They say we must not only notice but act to protect our biodiversity.
As world leaders head to Scotland for the Cop26 summit on global warming, it was reported last week that more than 1,100 of Scotland’s wildlife species and natural habitats are in poor condition and dozens of protected sites have been damaged by climate change.
One charity, Scotland: The Big Picture, has told how our wild places are being significantly depleted and executive director Peter Cairns, a passionate advocate for rewilding the country’s untamed acres, warns that its ecological integrity is in dire need of support.
He said: “Despite its obvious reputation for beauty and drama, ecologically speaking, Scotland is massively impoverished. We have become one of the most naturedepleted countries in the world in terms of the biodiversity we have lost. We perceive the landscape in a certain way but the reality is that, for the large part, it’s severely degraded and missing many of the species that not so very long ago would have been found here.”
Scotland: The Big Picture is involved in many programmes to help restore Scotland to its former ecological glory, one of which is the Northwoods Rewilding Network, which helps support farmers and small landowners to sustainably rewild their grounds. Cairns explained: “With Northwoods, what we’re trying to do is make rewilding accessible to people other than wealthy philanthropists and large conservation groups. It caters for land holdings between 50 and 1,000 acres. It’s a diverse range of people that make up the network. There are now 35 land partners, covering 10,000 acres.
“They have signed up to a prescribed set of rewilding principles, which puts nature restoration at the heart of what they do with their lands. They are coming at it from a whole range of different motivations; some want to create new business models and some are doing it out of a sense of civic duty. All of them are committed to nature restoration on the land that they control.”
Cairns hopes the work his charity is doing will not only repopulate the Highlands with nature but also with people. He said: “While rewilding is ultimately about relinquishing control to
nature, we’re starting from a pretty low point, so there’s a significant amount of human intervention that has to take place. There will be more opportunities in some remote rural areas so hopefully there will be more young people taking up those opportunities afforded by a rewilded landscape. Not just tourism, but meaningful careers in a nature-based economy.”
Cairns explained that restoring Scotland’s countryside is essential when it comes to mitigating the effects climate change will have on the country. “In terms of stabilising the climate breakdown, things like native woodland and peatland are huge carbon stores. Peatland is one of the most efficient stores of carbon in terms of habitat on the planet – it’s competing with the Amazonian
rainforest. Salt marshes and wetlands are also massive storers of carbon. “Rewilding offers a hugely cost-effective opportunity for mitigating climate change before you even think about electric cars, wind farms or solar energy. There’s a huge amount of natural solutions to climate mitigation, but we have to understand the functionality of natural habitats and what they can do for the climate. It’s like a car engine – you start taking bits off of it and it doesn’t work as well as it might.
“The ecological integrity of Scotland’s landscape has a direct impact on our ability to mitigate the worst effects of climate breakdown. It’s an opportunity as well as a threat. If we can get these landscapes functioning as they should, it will help with climate change, but if we continue to allow them to become degraded, then it will have the opposite effect. That’s not my opinion – that’s science.”