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 nature-depleted 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.”
Peter Cairns is one of Scotland: The Big Picture’s photographers who document the effect of nature depletion on our countryside.
Here, describing four photographs, he explains some of the charity’s projects
(Pic: Peter Cairns/2020VISION)
Cairngorms Connect is part of a 200-year vision to restore 600 sq km of forest, peatland, loch and river at the heart of Cairngorms National Park. Four landowners – RSPB, NatureScot, Forestry and Land Scotland and Wildland Ltd – have come together with a shared vision to restore the land. This photo shows a mosaic of habitats.
(Pic: Peter Cairns/Northshots)
Glen Affric National Nature Reserve is part of a new initiative – Affric Highlands – driven by the organisation Trees For Life. It encompasses four Glens covering 500,000 acres, all potentially up for rewilding. In this photo, you see little islands and ribbons of trees. In 30 years, we hope it would be more extensively wooded, going up into the background of the mountains.
This is Glenan Wood, a community forest in Argyll and part of the Northwoods Rewilding Network. It is 400 acres of Atlantic rainforest on the west coast, and the community has asked us to revitalise it. While the forest looks healthy, under that canopy is extensive deer incursion and rhododendron invasion. The forest is being strangled by this by this invasive weed.
The Seawilding project is an example of community rewilding in Scotland. This is native oyster restoration in Loch Craignish near Oban. They are restocking the loch with native oysters, which are really beneficial because they filter pollutants out of the water, and create healthy marine systems – across most of Scotland those systems have been broken down. Reintroductions are not just about species likes beavers and wolves, and so this is a great example of marine rewilding.
Intrepid conservationists climb every mountain to help wildflower survive in Scotland’s wilderness
Those on the frontline of Scotland’s conservation work will spare no effort in protecting our native wildlife and habitats – even if that means climbing dangerous mountains in order to do it. A group of conservationists at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh will face the loose rocks and slippery slopes of Cairngorms National Park as they attempt to transplant hundreds of the native but vulnerable Cicerbita alpina plants from their nursery in Edinburgh to the plants’ natural home among the crags of Scotland’s mountain ranges.
It is part of the organisation’s project to protect the ecological integrity of Scotland’s rural areas and countryside.
Conservation horticulturist Martine Borge explained: “The team will transplant hundreds of Cicerbita plants to sites within Mar Lodge Estate, Glen Feshie and Glen Lochay in the north-east.
“Some of the planting sites are in steep mountainous areas which we often can only access safely with ropes. However, despite the challenges to the team, ensuring these new plants are translocated to new, inaccessible mountain spots will give this beautiful species a chance of long-term survival.”
Cicerbita alpina, also known as the Alpine blue-sow-thistle, has blue-violet florets and red-tinted stems.
It is able to withstand heavy winds, and can grow as tall as 150cm at above 700m altitude. It once grew widely across Scotland’s mountains and river courses, but grazing and man-made changes mean its population has depleted and it has a lowered ability to reproduce from current locations.
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© Philip Price
