P3-Vol 2.No3 Dec 96 - International Journal of Wilderness

landowners have initiated programs to
regenerate the native pinewoods in particular.
These efforts mainly have taken
the form of erecting fences to keep deer
and other grazing animals out of the
remnants of the original forest so that
they can regenerate successfully. However,
these initiatives cover only a small
part of the original forest area and have
been largely uncoordinated.
To re-establish a true wilderness in
the Highlands—and indeed a substantial
forest—rather than just small pockets
of woodland scattered in an otherwise
denuded landscape, requires a
larger vision. This is the need that the
conservation charity Trees for Life
(TFL) has responded to through its goal
of linking up some of the isolated forest
remnants and thereby restoring the
natural tree cover to a large contiguous
area of about 600 square miles in
the north-west Highlands. This remote
area (see Figure 2) provides one of the
best opportunities for re-creating a true
wilderness in Britain, as it has almost
no people living in it, there are no
through roads, very few economic activities
take place there (except for deer
stalking), and it contains three of the
main remnants of the native pinewoods.
The area is mountainous and contains
several large lochs (lakes), while it is
also large enough to contain small
populations of the extirpated large
mammals, which we aim to have reintroduced
when there is suitable habitat
for them. Despite its size, however,
this area alone would not be adequate
to support genetically sustainable
populations of the largest of the missing
mammals, as species such as wolves
and bears require a large range in which
to live. Thus, we envision linking the
area outlined above to other sites of restored
forest in the Highlands by creating
corridors of natural habitat.
Ecological
Restoration Strategy
We have a threefold strategy for the
return of the forest. First is to facilitate
the natural regeneration of the trees by
fencing the deer out of areas on the
periphery of the existing remnants,
which will permit seedlings to grow
Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) and silver birches (Betula pendula) in autumn, overlooking Loch Benevean, Glen Affrig Caledonian
Forest Reserve, Scotland. (Photo by A.W. Featherstone.)
naturally to maturity again without
being overgrazed. This is the simplest
and best method of regenerating the
forest, as it involves the minimum of
intervention and allows nature to do
most of the work—one of the basic
principles of ecological restoration (see
Table 1). However, this approach only
works in locations where there is an
existing seed source nearby, which is
not the case in the treeless expanses that
make up most of the Highlands today.
The second part of our strategy applies
in these situations, to areas where there
aren’t nearby seed sources: native trees
are planted in barren areas where the
forest has disappeared completely. To
do this, we collect seed from the nearest
surviving trees to maintain the lo-
cal genetic variation in the forest. The
resulting seedlings are then planted in
a random pattern inside fenced enclosures,
replicating the natural distribution
of the trees. We work with all of
the native trees from the forest, and pay
particular attention to the pioneer species,
such as birch, rowan, and aspen, as
they have an important role to play in
the succession of the forest as it gets
re-established.
The third part of our strategy involves
the felling of nonnative trees, which in
some areas have been planted as a commercial
crop amongst the old trees of
the Caledonian Forest remnants,
thereby preventing their regeneration.
These felled exotics are not extracted
but are left to decompose in situ so that
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WILDERNESS/Volume 2, Number 3, December 1996 39