And it came to pass

by Finlay MacRae

Finlay MacRae MBE, in his capacity as the District Officer with the Forestry Commission, initiated the first restoration measures for the Caledonian Forest in Glen Affric back in the 1960s. Here he gives a personal account of the work so far...

If you ever decide to walk across Highland Scotland from coast to coast, then I suggest you take your first steps around Beauly and head for Kintail in the West, via Strathglass and Glen Affric. The fat lands by the Beauly Firth grow barley and oats and, often in great bright yellow squares and rectangles, oil seed rape.

Just beyond is the pastoral strath west of the Crask of Aigas, with its birchwoods and splendid broom, a brilliant green golf course, and the gentle River Glass taking it's time to the sea. Then come the native pinewoods, remnants from the great ice, skirting down to Lochs Beinn a'Mheadhoin and Affric. Finally a long peaty track through red deer country and the great rock slabs, before Loch Duich and Kintail, with it's spectacular mountains. Kintail, MacLennan and MacRae country, is called Ceaun Saile in Gaelic, meaning 'the head of the salt water". Where else in the wide world could you find such a variety of landscapes all in a 50 mile stretch? - nowhere.

Downy birch (Betula pubescens) below Glac Daraich, Glen Affric National Nature Reserve.

But do not press on head down. Take time to look more closely at the land between Fasnakyle and West Affric where the ancient woods of pine, birch, aspen, rowan and willow live on in beauty and tranquility, the scouring of the great ice forgotten.

From the road, the notion of a native pinewood is one of mist, and dourness and green - a crown of green, green needles on a long thin stem, shoulder to shoulder cover, with never a blink of blue sky or fluttering broadleaf. If this is your vision, you have two options. One is to stop in Beauly, the other is to look again, use your eyes and ears and your imagination. Above all, take your time. The native woodland has boundless variety, and around each corner, and there are many, new vistas suddenly take hold. Solid pine is often replaced by solid birch, but perhaps most spectacular of all is the mix of species, a silvicultural broth that has been stirred around by creation. Humanity is incapable of producing such a landscape. All we can do is look at it, wonder, and become more aware of our insignificance. Beyond the Fasnakyle power station the river plunges and twists through rocky gussets and cauldrons - the Dog Falls are close to the road. Legend has it that a local shepherd, tired of his failing and ancient sheepdog, decided to drown it in the raging torrent. When he opened his door the following morning, there was the old dog on his doorstep - hence the name, Dog Falls.

Close to the Affric Dam, on the downside of the tarmac road and stretching in to the dam head is a very dense grove of Scots pine. The trees, 30-40 feet in height, gun-barrel straight and spectacularly dense, are now at the clearing or re-spacing stage. They provide a good example of natural regeneration at its most prolific.

In the 1950's earth, peat, gravel, crushed rock, all thoroughly mixed, fresh from the tunnel and dam head excavations, were dumped here, and shaped, to slope steeply down to the dam over-spill river. At a higher elevation ancient pines cling to the rocks that fringe the newly made road. Unperturbed by this new earthly commotion, they waited to play a master role in woodland repair. Heavy with cones, bursting with seed, they cast their yearly harvest onto the newly shaped tunnel spoi1. The dusty rough surface took up the seed as dry sand takes up the rising tide, not only pine seed but a frass of accompanying birch, aspen, rowan - an invasive mixture in search of an acceptable cradle.

By 1965 a mini forest formed, all of a sudden, as if it were knee high when I first saw it in 1963 - dense, healthy, screaming for light as it emerged with vigour from this ideal matrix. There was a clear lesson here. Given mineral soil, abundant seed, the right balance of moisture and warmth, the old native woodland would flourish as strongly as a well groomed lawn.

Taking up the lesson and transmitting this to the extensive woods across the river was not a simple matter. The terrain and scale were different - the little wood had all the current ingredients, not least, natural protection by a busy roadside where deer damage was unlikely. At that time sheep and deer were common as far east as Cannich Village. In the main wood heather was deep, overlying raw peat which covered the mineral soil, centuries of deposition in a wet climate. Protection of a 800 ha exclosure, and the employment of full time stalkers were unaffordable.

The outlook for a reasonable level of natural regeneration was not encouraging but rather a daunting task. Initially, small areas of 4-6 ha were selected and the finest straight stemmed and well wooded trees were isolated as 'mother trees' at about 20-30 foot spacing, forming a sparse grove occupying a knee high heather exclosure.

Regeneration was present but sparse and severely damaged by deer who grazed the emerging trees down to the heather level. Clearly, this did not appear to be the way ahead, but on reflection we may have been over-impatient, a bad recipe for long term natural regeneration. The idea was abandoned. Then came cone collection from the best-shaped trees, a sort of Miss World event, with lanky stems and good crowns picked to give of their seed. A genetic, false selection, it failed to utilise the future gene pool. Professor Steven, my mentor at Aberdeen suggested we collect seed from the whole range of native trees, so it was back to the drawing board. The collected seed was sent to the Black Isle, and raised in a heathland nursery at Munlochy with great care, about a million at a time. The exercise produced a good plantablc stock 6-9 inches in height.

Then came a new approach. Mechanical cultivation proving expensive and physically impossible, we resorted to hand draining and turfing, planting and fertilising.

Trees that flourished from spring planting went into the winter full of vigour, rich green, obviously in good growth. By mid December and early spring only the bare turfs remained. At this stage we had to ask, was the whole exercise sheer folly? Had not the Forestry Commission Research Branch tried this in many places and written it off as a wasted effort?

One further attempt remained, to increase the pressure on the deer by dividing the large exclosure into three equal sections. Deer would be shot in the exclosures, irrespective of species, season etc. Two highly experienced stalkers, diverted to pay particular attention to the new exclosures, tackled the deer problem head on. MacLennan and MacSwan became the lynch pins of the last regeneration effort. They became leviathans of the restoration of the Affric pine woods.

Five years passed with trees from the nursery in use. Densely planted in turfs, success appeared to blossom as never before, sleep returned. The stalkers were relentless, examining each exclosure to a rigid time table and clearing all deer as the need arose. Many foresters have said to me "Well, that's the last one out of that exclosure". I never believed that then - I don't believe it today.

Success was such that planted and naturally regenerated trees grew on steadily and were clearly visible at mid-range. The future seemed bright. Perhaps it was time to relax.

At this stage, in an attempt to de-regulate the rigid lines and overcome the 'planted look', it was decided to try a period of intense protection and refrain from planting. Natural regeneration was abundant where mineral soils were close to the surface. On deep heather-bound peat the results were less evident and trees were sparse, but once they emerged from the tall heather they grew on, albeit in a less dense pattern.

Around 1973/75 the price of venison rose to an all time high - as I recall it, to £1/pound. I recall that in the 1950's, the price could be as low as 6 pence/pound and carcasses were left on the hill, the price of retrieval being more than the meat was worth. This was a dreadful situation with stalkers killing deer that they knew were not worth taking to the larder. I hope I never see that again. The new high price worked in favour of the pinewood, our neighbours cashing in on this bonanza and greatly reducing the pressure on our boundaries, and the guarded exclosures.

Pressure on any exclosure is always greater in winter when, not unnaturally, deer move from the high tops and make bold attempts to seek shelter of the woods and the deep, dry, heather bed. Deer fences get snowed under and deer under winter stress simply march across the deep drifts. Many days were spent removing deer by driving the exclosures, the fences removed over long stretches to make the way to the outer hill easier. Tiring and tedious work, driving was often unsuccessful and shooting trapped deer was the only way ahead.

Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris) on the north shore of Loch Affric, Glen Affric National Nature Reserve.

Allowing deer to shelter in the Scots pinewoods in the other glens led me to ascertain that freedom from damage came when trees were 30 feet high and with 9 inches of girth at breast height. Should the policy be therefore to exclude deer until you have the safe height and/or suitable girth, trees with hard, dry, indigestible bark?

The debate about the right time to remove fences went on, and all the time the woods grew denser, and finding and shooting deer from dense thickets became more difficult. Are we sure today that throwing the woods open to deer is the correct way ahead - I wonder. Will we have to re-fence again and again over the next 100 or 200 years. I hope not! The answer must surely lie in getting the balance between trees and deer numbers correct. The national pressure must of course apply to the high fringes as well as to the forest. Deer belong in the forest all in the correct and acceptable density. Is this two, three, five or ten per hectare? I don't believe we know, and much work will be needed to get a better understanding of the situation over the next 100 years.

My visit to Affric with the present management and the good volunteers of Trees for Life this year was encouraging and exciting. The forest is advancing and there is really no urgency to meet a final target in terms of extent. Better by far that we should have a fine small heartland of native pine forest than an immense area impossible to control and manage. The recipe will dawn with time and 'the worries of yesterday' will, I'm sure, dissipate.

The present mature wood represents 30 generations. There have been many climatic changes, changes in soil, changes in topography and sadly, in human population. Fear not, it is simply a question of ongoing effort. The cost in national terms is small in comparison to the gain, in physical, mental and spiritual terms, encapsulated in a refurbished Caledonian pinewood. It will come to pass.

This article was first published in Caledonia Wild! Summer 1999, the newsletter of Trees for Life.

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