A conservation charity is planning to plant a million trees over the next five years in a bid to regenerate an ancient Scottish forest.
Trees for Life's new campaign, Million More Trees, is said to be a response to environmental problems including deforestation, climate change and biodiversity loss.
The trees will be planted in the ancient Caledonian Forest, which once covered the Highlands but only 1% of it remains.
The charity said the million-trees goal will see its restoration work double.
It is hoped the campaign will benefit the country's economy by boosting wildlife tourism.
Trees for Life said a report published this month by Tourism Intelligence Scotland estimated that one million visits are made to Scotland every year to view wildlife.
Alan Watson Featherstone, Trees for Life's executive director, said: "Establishing a million new native trees in the next five years represents a significant scaling up of our work.
"We have set ourselves this challenge as a response to the threats posed by environmental degradation globally and human-induced climate change.
"At the same time it is part of a positive vision of re-establishing world-class wild landscapes rich in wildlife in Scotland.
"The Highlands in particular, with a lot of empty land and a low population density, is a perfect region for tree planting.
"With wildlife tourism already generating an estimated £276 million a year for the Scottish economy, it's clear that restoring the Caledonian Forest and its unique wildlife to an inspiring, spectacular wilderness region of 1,000 square miles could have significant economic as well as environmental benefits for the country."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article