Restoring the ancient Caledonian Forest Alan Watson Featherstone TEDxFindhorn

Scotland is world famous for its wide open landscapes its beautiful green vistas in its treeless Hills and there is a certain beauty in that but actually it's only skin deep and if we look deeper we find the true nature of the land and the history that is there we find the evidence of what we've lost the forest that has gone the trees that have vanished the wildlife that has gone with it and the stark reality is that we live in a devastated landscape in the highlands and everywhere you go you see the signs of this the stumps of the old pine trees exposed in the P tags and the standing lonely skeletons the snags of the trees that have died more recently so going out into these areas for me is actually very painful it's a landscape of great sadness of great loss it's a landscape where the trees are gone the wildlife has gone many species are extinct and it's also a landscape where the people are gone too and in the second part of the 18th century in the Highland Clearances people were moved off the land in large numbers and the ruined Crofts are all that her left the only memories of them today so the highlands of Scotland for me are like an outdoor museum we go to museums to see dead things relics preserved from the past and that's what we've got in landscapes like this in Scotland this by contrast is what most of the country would have been like probably 4,000 years ago everywhere looked like this big Vista lots of water lots of trees and mountains and under the trees a rich understory of Labor E and Heather and full of life graphically this illustrates what's happened the map on the Left shows the maximum extent of the native pie nose of Scotland the Caledonian forest as they would have been probably four thousand years ago what we've got left today on the right are those little black those scattered fragments isolated from each other many of them very small in size and the shaded area there is where trees for life my charity has been working for the past 27 years so we've inherited a ruined landscape from the past a depleted ecosystem a devastated land and the imbalance in the ecosystem is preventing that from recovering naturally 10,000 years ago we had no trees in Scotland because the country had been covered by ice and when the ice retreated trees came birds insects animals and people came and life returned the same thing would happen today if we were not actively preventing it and we do that by maintaining artificially high numbers of large herbivores on the land Red Deer and sheep and they graze everything down to a few centimeters in height Red Deer or woodland animals but they've adapted to the open hillsides but given a chance they come into the woodland fragments and their shelter there there's things to eat and so every tree seedling that has germinated for the past 200 years in unprotected areas has been eaten as you see in the middle photograph and that has left us with what I call the geriatric forest stands of old trees vulnerable beings 200 or more years of age reaching the end of their lives and dying with no new ones coming to take their place it's a bit like going to an old people's home but where children are banned everything gets eaten not just the pine trees actually you have to be pretty tough to eat a pine seedlings we've ever tried using pine needles Rowan much more palatable to deer gets eaten before anything else and this is a cluster of Rowan's I've been photographing for 23 years and you can see in the photograph from 2015 the seedlings are no higher no bigger than they were in 1992 and there's not a living tree in that landscape we have effectively got a landscape with these giant lawnmowers deer and sheep mowing everything down to grass height when we should have an ecosystem of trees 25 meters or more tall I first became aware of this in the 1980s and I've visited some sites where people had done some experimental work to reduce the grazing pressure putting up fences to keep deer out and then the photograph on the left here you can see some of the trees that grew nobody planted them they were self sown from the old ones in the background and they've grown on over the years and by the time the second photograph was taken they were big enough that the fence could be removed and they were safe from getting eaten so over a period of years I saw this happening and I felt called I felt moved to do something I kept getting this sense somebody's to do something or this forest is going to disappear entirely so almost exactly 30 years ago I stood in this very auditorium almost exactly in this spot in front of 300 people at the end of a conference and made a commitment to launch a project to restore the Caledonian forest and that has become my life work it's become my passion and I started it with nothing no knowledge no resources no access to land no funds but I had passion and I had inspiration and that has carried me forward it took two or three years to get started and fencing off an area of 50 hectares in 1990 was the first major achievement a student had done researched and found a hundred thousand pine seedlings already they're growing from seeds dropped from nearby trees average age ten years old and the average height about the size of this laser pointer 95% had been eaten by deer so putting the fence up they started to grow after two years you can see there the results and in the other picture it was taken last year that particular tree we call it the champion pine has been producing seeds of its own for 15 years and so the process of forest recovery is accelerating this is another view of that same initial exclosure and in 1989 those three standing dead Pines were a symbol of the dying out of that forest was fenced there were healthy old trees they're still producing seed and they've grown and now you can see the new trees have actually over topped the old skeletons for the first time it's a very symbolic tipping point has been reached so this is natural regeneration that's the best option but that only works if you've got a seed source nearby most of Scotland is bereft of trees so there are no seeds so we plant trees we started in 1991 this was one of our first ever tree planting weeks and that man a volunteer planted a pine next to that stump and we mimic nature by planting where we know Pines would grow or where other trees would grow we avoid straight lines and planting groups and clusters and you can see in the following pictures there how not only has that tree grown but also the heather has grown up around the roots of the old stump that was there in 1991 because the deer do not just eat trees they eat everything they eat Heather the all the plants that are there and they reduce it down to this very small size so we get forest recovery and as I say it's not just the trees that grow everything comes back this is the same area a different part of it showing the fence and to me this is the dramatic contrast of young trees that are growing healthily heather is flowering there and the green plant is bog myrtle an aromatic shrub that's also a favorite food of deer so that's all growing inside outside the fence you can see it's just grass and peat hags those open wounds those running sores in the landscape a couple of other photographs show the same thing the fence lines mark this dramatic boundary between what Sir Frank Fraser darling the famous British conservationist in the 50s termed the wet desert and what I would describe as the wild garden and you can see in one photograph there birch trees and Heather growing abundantly once the grazing pressure is reduced the other photograph even more remarkably a very small area fence to protect a tiny eared willow seedling in the Upper Africa River and after seven years Bluebell started appearing the nearest source of bluebells is about 20 miles away how did they get there we don't know but nature responds to love nature responds to care and seeming miracles take place and even the P tags those gashes in the earth where the elements have caused erosion exposing the underlying peat they to heal over time it's a slow process but if they're protected you get things like sphagnum moss and bog myrtle growing in them and the green over so even those wounds will heal over time and once the vegetation grows we get the return of lots of other life because if you contrast a little bit of grass with a tree that's even this high there's much more foliage to eat so insects appear caterpillars beetles other winged insects they feed on the vegetation and they in turn attract birds and the birds bring seeds in their gut from berries that they've eaten which germinate and the whole process gathers momentum like a snowball rolling downhill ecological restoration is a natural process we're interfering with it in most of Scotland today if we stop interfering and actively assist we can accelerate it and speed it up so moving on from the vegetation the next step is larger life forms and Scotland's lost most of its large mammals the brown bear the wolf the Lynx the moose beavers wild boar all were hunted out over a period of a thousand years or more of the Lynx gone a thousand years ago on the wolf maybe three hundred years ago but in the last decade we've got two of them back beavers have been brought back in an official trial in Argyll and in an unofficial population in Tayside and wild boar have escaped from boar farms in various parts and are now spreading in the Scottish countryside and that's really interesting because both of those species are what we call keystone species they have a disproportionately positive benefit on the ecosystem in comparison to their numbers beavers create ponds which are good habitat for dragonfly larvae for other aquatic invertebrates for amphibians like frogs and they attract birds and animals like the otter wild boar root around in the ground disturbing the soil creating perfect nursery beds for the germination of tree seedlings so they are active agents of accelerating the recovery of the ecosystem and when we get some of those species back we get interesting relationships established once more Bor for instance are well known in continental Europe for being followed by Robins Robins look for grubs and worms in the soil that the borer disturb now in the absence of borer in Scotland for the past few hundred years they've adapted to humans to gardeners so if you go and dig your garden the Robins will follow you around we're poor surrogates so when we brought bore back to our done dragon conservation estate a few years ago within 24 hours the Robins were following them around again they have a long ecological memory the other photograph shows a young Aspen and when we protected it again highly palatable to deer when we protect you that within 10 weeks it was supporting a fridge that sucked its SAP and would ants that came to tend the aphids and they consumed the honeydew that the aphids secrete as a waste product and wood ants are keystone species in the forest with an important role so when we start to put one piece back in place in the web of life other pieces reestablish to themselves and the connections come together again so the next step then is returning more of the species that are missing and in some cases the red squirrel being an example we still have those in Scotland but the range is very limited and because our woodlands are fragmented as you saw in the map earlier many of those fragments are too small and too isolated particularly in the northwest of Scotland to support any squirrels and they're separated by large distances that are treeless the squirrels cannot cross so where translocating squirrels now and that's been proven to be successful they're breeding and then the squirrels of course distribute seeds from pinecones and acorns from oak trees and they help the forest expand the real test is still to come though and that is greenback creditors and we have three large predators absent from Scotland to the brown bear the wolf and the Lynx and the links is probably the most likely one that we could be feasibly bringing back and I would like to see it in the next decade or so evidence from elsewhere such as Yellowstone in the States shows that Predators fulfill a crucial role in regulating ecosystems and if you take them away as we've done in Scotland you get ecosystem unraveling and collapse if you bring them back things reassemble themselves again so out of this then we've developed set of principles that guide our work of restoration I've talked about some of these along the way but very briefly you start from areas of strength where the ecosystem in its best condition focus on keystone species something like the Scots pine the keystone tree or the beaver you mimic nature wherever possible you recreate ecological niches where they've been lost things like dead wood in the forest and you also remove introduced non-native species particularly invasive ones like rhododendron or the issue we have around here with um giant hogweed for instance some other principles are you focus on species that have limited ability to disperse by themselves aspen tree is one of those you re-establish some of the key ecological processes that are absent at the moment nutrient cycling natural disturbance predator-prey dynamics those are essential for the healthy functioning of natural ecosystems you let nature do most of the work because restoration recovery is a natural process and all we are wanting to do is help it on its way it's co-creation with nature and lastly and perhaps most significantly what I call the green thumb principle the experience that when we work with open hearts and bring our love and care we can make things grow help them grow more abundantly more healthily more vibrantly so restoration is about reconnecting the strands in the web of life but it's also about reconnecting people with the rest of the because most of us today grew up isolated from wild nature our experiences may be a garden or possibly a town park so engaging in restoration can have very beneficial effects most of our work is done by volunteers people come from all over Britain and from many other countries to young women from Madagascar there and it connects us with some of the most important qualities that I believe are essential for well-being and human happiness it connects us with the rest of nature connects us with life very important at a time when most of our culture is so focused on death and destruction connects us with place you have to know the place that you're helping to restore connects us with each other we find common cause and shared passion in the work that we're doing it connects us with our own power how many people in the world today feel like they'd like to do something positive to make a difference in the world but don't know what to do in the face of all the huge forces that are out there planting a tree a Scott spine that could live for 500 years and be a habitat for birds and squirrels and all sorts of things in future is a very empowering act restoration is about healing a degraded ecosystem so when we engage in that we also engage in the healing process in ourselves it's part of our own journey back to wholeness it also connects us with spirit spirit in ourselves spirit in each other spirit in the world around us and with hope and hope as a quality very much in short supply in much of our world today and restoration is a statement of hope that a forest will be there in future that we will pass on to future generations a healthier more vibrant landscape than that which we inherited from the past so it's a labor of love it's a gift to future generations it's a deeply meaningful powerful act my son's grandchildren will possibly see the fruits of the labors of today they might see the mature trees that we are planting currently and engaging in this often has life-changing effects this is one example Jenny Martin a woman who came and volunteered in 1995 did five weeks in a row was deeply moved by it later became a staff member and she said Alan it's great that we take adults but what about the children they're the next generation we've got to get them involved too so she started taking children out into the forest and in 2003 that work had developed so much that it became a separate charity very successful now and last year won the Queen's Award for a voluntary service because of that but the change goes further than that it's not just an individual level I believe is happening on a cultural level too in a society because over the 30 years I've been involved with this and I've seen other people involved as well we've discovered we need to reclaim our power to make a difference to help address these issues on our land and we didn't have political power so we've seen re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament and we are getting extra powers this year so there's a greater drive for political self-determination which i think is apparent in many native cultures around the world when the link between people and culture is broken cultures go into apathy and decline when it's reestablished it's an empowering energizing experience so restoration needs to happen on a local level these are some of the first trees we planted in 1991 now returning life to what was then a very very derelict looking landscape and it also needs to happen on a global level too because our world is in need of restoration the most predominant feature in the picture of the planet from space is desertified areas so the work in Scotland about nurturing life is being mirrored by other organizations in other countries restoring their ecosystems and I see all of this as the first steps towards what I think has to become the major task for humans this century restoring the earth healing our planet thank you very much

Channel: Trees for Life

Views: 545,420

Rating: 4.9405851 out of 5

Keywords: TEDx, caledonian forest, forest restoration, rewilding

Id: nAGHUkby2Is

Length: 20min 12sec (1212 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 09 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/totentanz]

Alan Watson-Featherstone is a national treasure, He's got an amazing blog (provided you like trees, but who doesn't?).

This talk was great, I've got nothing but support for restoring our caledonian forests - I'd love to see half of Scotland reforested.

[u/DundonianDolan]

I bought a grove for my birthday a few years back, definitely a good cause.

[u/JiberybobX]

Is this the same thing that there was an article about recently? Something about people complaining this sort of thing will ruin the "open vistas" Scotland is known for.

If so, no real opinion myself - just interesting how the same thing can be portrayed in completely different lights.

Edit: Was an interesting watch