Scattered across the Scottish Highlands are the last surviving remnants of the Caledonian forest which have survived, naturally seeding and growing since the last ice age. Visiting these ancient woods provides an emotional connection to the past with visible traces of the people who lived and worked there over the centuries. There is also a chance to look forward, after one of the greatest conservation success stories means a new future for the pinewoods and their spectacular wildlife. This journey to the pinewoods introduces a natural wonder alongside a rich cultural heritage.
In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge Estate in the heart of the Cairngorms. Home to over 5,000 species, this vast expanse of Caledonian woodlands, subarctic mountains, bogs, moors, roaring burns and frozen lochs could be a place where environmental conservation and Highland field sports would exist in harmony. The only problem was that due to centuries of abuse by human hands, the ancient Caledonian pinewoods were dying, and it would take radical measures to save them. After 25 years of extremely hard work, the pinewoods, bogs, moors and mountains are returning to their former glory. Regeneration is the story of this success, featuring not only the people who are protecting the land and quietly working to undo the wrongs of the past, but also the myriad creatures which inspire them to do so. In addition, it also tackles current controversies such as raptor persecution, deer management and rewilding and asks bigger questions about the nature of conservation itself: what do we see when we look at our wild places? What should we see?
In beautiful prose and stunning color photographs, this book explores the rainforests that run along the west coasts of Scotland, England, Wales, and Ireland.
This book presents up-to-date information about Scotland's native woodlands. It draws upon professional experience of scientific research, survey and management, where the author has studied many important native woodlands in Scotland and beyond.
Professor John Harper, in his recent Population Biology of Plants (1977), made a comment and asked a question which effectively states the theme of this book. Noting that 'one of the consequences of the development of the theory of vegetational climax has been to guide the observer's mind forwards', i. e. that 'vegetation is interpreted as a stage on the way to something' , he commented that 'it might be more healthy and scientifically more sound to look more often backwards and search for the explanation of the present in the past, to explain systems in relation to their history rather than their goal'. He went on to contrast the 'disaster theory' of plant succession, which holds that communities are a response to the effects of past disasters, with the 'climax theory', that they are stages in the approach to a climax state, and then asked 'do we account most completely for the characteristics of a population by a knowledge of its history or of its destiny?' Had this question been put to R. S. Adamson, E. J. Salisbury, A. G. Tansley or A. S. Watt, who are amongst the giants of the first forty years of woodland ecology in Britain, their answer would surely have been that understanding lies in a knowledge of destiny. Whilst not unaware of the historical facts of British woodlands, they were preoccupied with ideas of natural succession and climax, and tended to interpret their observations in these terms.
