Letter: Highland help

There are many myths circulating around the hills and glens of the Highlands and the recent debate in your columns on peatland, woodland and sporting estates sees their continuance.

Could I ask that we consider the Highlands a wasted land ready for rehabilitation, not a wasteland ripe for development and that the soil-vegetation complex be held as the true resource?

Twenty five years ago, as co-founder of the Loch Garry Tree Group, Scottish Native Woods and co-developer of The New Caledonia Project, colleagues and I considered many of the issues raised in recent letters and there's a strong sense of deja vu about the concerns raised.

There is little doubt that had Britain remained terra incognita with no human settlement, then woodland cover, despite wet cool periods favouring peat development, would have been very much greater than today.

The truth is that both the agricultural/industrial activities of man and climate change, especially the former, have had millennia-long negative impacts on woodland cover and composition.

What are not ancient are the present regimes of hill-sheep grazing, forestry and sporting estates.

In the grand scheme of things, all three have existed for a mere instant of bio-geological time. They are not immutable and not the only way we could own and manage land.

It really boils down to what kind of sustainable cultural landscape we wish to have people living and working in and what place re-wilding might have in it.

Sadly, even in this time of an approaching Holyrood election all the main parties are exhibiting, in this issue, all the forward vision of a flea on a dog's backside.

Ron Greer

Blair Atholl

Perthshire