I NOTE with interest recent correspondence about the planting of trees in or close to Caledonian pinewood remnants such as Abernethy, where the RSPB has announced plans for re-instating the woodland's missing broadleaved tree component by planting 100,000 trees (Letters, April 15 & 17).
This is an important and much-needed step towards restoring the full biological diversity of these iconic woodlands. They have lost much of their broadleaved trees such as rowan, aspen and willows, which died off (being shorter-lived than the Scots pine) and then were unable to regenerate because of their greater palatability to large herbivores such as red deer.
The disappearance of these trees has led to the loss of specialist species that depend on them, so that the aspen hoverfly, for instance, has become very rare and endangered in Scotland. Although good regeneration of Scots pine is now occurring in at least some of the Caledonian pinewoods, this is not the case for the more palatable broadleaved trees, which is why planting is important and necessary.
It appears that tree planting has gained a bad name in some quarters, perhaps due to past commercial forestry practices that have resulted in the linear, single-species phalanxes of non-native conifers that are visible in plantations today. This is unfortunate, as it's a far cry from the tree planting carried out by organisations such as the RSPB and Trees for Life. We seek to replicate nature, with an irregular, variedly spaced distribution of trees, grown from seed collected from a wide range of local trees, mimicking how the trees would recover by themselves, if the current over-abundance of herbivores were not preventing that.
I would agree with critics that some of the new native woodland schemes funded by the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP), which have used intensive forestry techniques such as machine mounding to create a linear, regular appearance to the planted woodlands, are not compatible with, or appropriate for, the ecological restoration of natural forests. I hope that the upcoming revision to the SRDP scheme will apply much tighter guidelines to correct this.
However, in areas such as the western part of Glen Affric, where Trees for Life planted trees 23 years ago, it is already impossible to distinguish between those which regenerated naturally and those which were planted, because of their irregular, varied distribution. That visual appearance of the forest is important to us humans, and it is what contributes to the distinctiveness of the Caledonian Forest.
It is not so important to wildlife though, and our iconic and important forest fauna, such as the red squirrel, Scottish crossbill and narrow-headed wood ant will not discriminate between areas where trees have been planted by organisations such as the RSPB and Trees for Life and those which have regenerated naturally.
What matters is that they will have an expanded habitat to thrive in once again, and they will be part of a restored, healthy and vibrant Caledonian Forest that will be enjoyed for generations to come.
Alan Watson Featherstone,
Executive Director,
Trees for Life,
The Park,
Findhorn Bay,
Forres.
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