Thread 👉 Centuries of deforestation then overgrazing by deer and sheep have left much of the Highlands of Scotland looking like this - what Frank Fraser Darling called a treeless 'wet desert'
But as you see from the end of the clip some trees survived on ungrazed rocky ground where red deer can't reach. In this case the trees are rowan and eared sallow. 
At @CorrourEstate in the central Highlands these trees, and others like birch and and goat willow are spreading back onto the open hill
This ecological recovery is thanks to efforts by Corrour to bring red deer densities down from levels which were ravaging the land in the absence of natural predators
It is a slow process but the Caledonian pine, birch, hazel, willow, juniper and rowan forest is returning. You can't see the trees in most places but the tiny saplings are there in some places ready to grow into mature trees
Not all of this landscape would have been closed canopy woodland however. We estimate that at Corrour 80% would have been a complex mosaic of quite open blanket peatlands and other mires with scattered trees, scrub and clumpy woodlands on the drier knolls
You can still see evidence of this from old Scots pine stumps in the peatbogs where they have become damaged and eroded by the hoofs of thousands of deer
When peat become damaged like this it releases huge amounts of carbon so over the next decade Corrour is aiming to restore around 5,000 hectares of historically damaged #peatlands
Bringing a living layer of Sphagnum back to the bare peat surfaces is critical to getting the bogs 'growing' again and turning them from a carbon source to a carbon sink
To do this some of the peat hags may need to be reprofiled and old drainage ditches blocked up with peat dams.
Once the bogs are restored, bogs plants and insects will return like the insectivorus sundew and butterwort 👇
Over time birds like golden plover will move back onto the repaired peatlands to breed and many other moss and liverwort species will return
As the forest returns and the peatlands heal, the ecosystem will start to function again. The rivers and burns will have clearer water benefitting fish, carbon will be locked away and the whole landscape will start to buzz with life
The experience of being in such a landscape will be different from the bald hills experience known to many a Munro bagger. There be something for everyone from the botanist to the loch swimmer to the game bird hunter to the hardy hiker
This is a simple vision of landscape scale ecological restoration. It can be done and I really hope this decade will be the turning point when many more landowners in Scotland will embrace this positive, regenerative approach to the stewardship of the lands in their care.
