Andrew Painting - Regeneration

REGENERATION

First published in 2021 by

Birlinn Limited

West Newington House

10 Newington Road Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Copyright Andrew Painting 2021

The map on contains Ordnance Survey Data Crown Copyright and Database Right 2020

The moral right of Andrew Painting to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978 1 78027 714 1

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Initial Typesetting Services, Edinburgh

Printed and bound by Clays Ltd Elcograf S.p.A.

Landscape is a work of the mind. Its scenery is built up as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock.

Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, 1996

We do not come to nature as impartial observers. We all have an emotional and cultural attachment to all the life with which we share the earth, from the smallest weed to the tallest tree. Such experiences and interests have the power to enrich and enhance our relationships with nature. They also have the power to complicate and destroy them.

This is worth remembering as we explore stories of the conservation efforts underway at Mar Lodge Estate National Nature Reserve. With its ancient pinewoods, subarctic mountains and rolling bogs and moors, the estate sits at a complex and often awkward juncture between these real and imagined landscapes. It is a deeply beautiful place, with the power to affect humans in ways that few other British landscapes can. It is a place of soaring eagles and roaring stags, a refuge for some of the rarest creatures in Scotland, a place of deadly cold, avalanches and remoteness, where the redstart still sings in the spring birch budburst and the salmon still runs up cascades. It is an ancient landscape which provides us with links to our past and refuge from our present. But it is also a contested place, which has been damaged by conflicts that blight the nature of Scotland and continue to divide its people.

In recent years it has become a place of cooperation and compromise. It is cared for by a bewildering array of people. This book is about that work, the people who do it, and the creatures that inspire them to do it. Their work is not easy. In fact, it is often extremely difficult. It has led to acrimony and hostility. It remains controversial, difficult, hard to pin down and understand. Yet this book is a collection of stories of regeneration, redemption and reconnection, of chances taken to fight the destruction of the environment, of collaboration and communication between different groups and cultures to make a better future for everyone. These are stories of people from all walks of life coming together and striving forwards to a new, biodiverse future, where humans can forge new relationships with nature, in new, enriched landscapes of the mind. In a world of mass extinction, these are rare stories of hope.

The whole, unabridged story of Mar Lodge Estate stretches back 10,000 years and more. It is a story involving queens and kings, princesses, dukes, earls, hunters, Jacobites, crofters, scientists, poets, adventurers. This is the place where a young Byron nearly met his end, and where Nan Shepherd was inspired to write her greatest works. This land has been buffeted by centuries of human use and abuse, by grand tides of history and Events with a capital E, by wars and Clearances, by lawsuits and climate change. Events have a great bearing on this story. But it is not always grand actions and heroic deeds which make the world a better place. It is often the gradual accumulation of small acts of kindness and curiosity and skill. So this book is filled with these little events: a person looking for wood ants, another counting trees, another stalking a deer. These little events, over time, become big events, gain traction, then movement, and slowly the world becomes a better place.

The catalyst that set many (but by no means all) of these remarkable little events in motion happened in 1995, when the National Trust for Scotland, with significant help from a number of people and organisations, acquired 30,000 hectares of some of our most celebrated land. It was to be held in trust for the benefit of the nation.

This book is a celebration of that Event. It tells some stories from the front line of environmental conservation. Ive been on the scene in a minor capacity at Mar Lodge for the last few years. Ive been given a ringside seat to some of the most exciting, progressive conservation stories currently playing out in Britain. The future is far from certain, and our environment faces greater challenges than ever before, but these stories show that there is still hope for the future.

Mostly though, this book is my way of answering a thorny question which has dogged my career. It is posed at parties, social events, any time I have met someone new, or even reunited with someone Ive not seen for a few years. It is an annoying question because to answer it properly takes slightly longer than the socially acceptable amount of time that one has to answer a question about ones job.

What does an ecologist actually do?

For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, 1849

May is the finest month in Scotland, and it is sacrilege to spend even one May day indoors. There are hundreds of thousands of trees on Mar Lodge Estate, and millions of seedlings and saplings. But there are three particularly interesting specimens, and Im setting out on a minor pilgrimage to see them.

Its a cold, clear, still day. Ive started early because it is a very long walk. I leave from the old stables, eaves thronged with house martin nests, walk out past the blackcap singing in the willow by the burn, and head along the back road. I walk past Mar Lodge itself. It is a grand, imposing, red granite, red-tiled mansion, with two large wings stretching out east and west. It is not as old as it looks Queen Victoria laid the first stone in 1895. The wildlife is in overdrive at this time of day. A brown hare lopes across the lawn, a red squirrel scampers up an old pine, its claws making a distinctive pitter-patter against the pine bark. I take a turning off into Doire Bhraghad,wooded brae, the Mar Forest. Its open woodland, grand old pines and birches, interspersed with thousands of young trees crowding the path. A mile or so on I surprise a black grouse. Unlike red grouse they dont call out your rudeness with an affronted go-back go-back. But they do still make a meal of their departure, all ruffled feathers and hurt pride. It gives me pause to stop and listen. Its a gorgeous morning, and the clear air is full of song; willow warblers, tree pipits, redstarts, tits, chaffinches, crossbills, siskins, cuckoos. Theres a great spotted woodpecker calling, and a minute after I hear a green woodpecker, which is something of a novelty this far north.