The Scottish Highlands are famous, distinctive, and landscapes of contrast, where jagged mountains sit alongside sweeping moors. However, from the flatlands of Caithness to the high plains of the Cairngorms, the vegetation is surprisingly uniform. The same species are found in different concentrations across the highlands. In the east, heather thrives, whereas flying bent and bog asphodel are more common in the west.

There is also a notable lack of trees and forests. While patches of woodland are found on sloping glens and along coastal fringes, trees naturally cover only 5% of the uplands. In fact, the absence of woodland is a key part of the area’s unique beauty. The low growing plants allow visitors to look across wide open vistas, free of obstructions. Indeed, writers and poets from or visiting Scotland have long written of this open landscape, with its sense of the open road.

This is also reflected in local building traditions. Historically, clansmen built their houses from turf, which later developed into houses made from stone. This contrasts with Scandinavia, where timber has always been plentiful and the building material of choice.

The lack of forests in the area is largely perceived to be the result of human activity. Therefore, there have been concerted efforts to introduce more trees to the Highlands. For some, this is important for the local economy, as commercial forestry is a key Highland industry. For others, it is a conservation approach, promoted as part of a grand vision of rewilding or as an opportunity for large-scale carbon sequestration.

These reforestation efforts have also led to widespread concerns about inflated populations of deer, who purportedly over-graze the land and prevent forests from growing. Calls to reintroduce wolves to the Highlands are, in part, motivated by the desire to reintroduce predators for grazing animals.

However, Dr James Fenton argues that the idea that we need to reintroduce forests to the Highlands stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the ecology of the region. Today, he says, land management is based on simplistic conceptions of the Scottish environment. In part, he suggests, this comes from the dominance of the southern perspective, that sees southern ecology to be standard and any differences in northern ecology to be anomalous.

The Highlands have long been beholden to these ideas and ecological assumptions and interventions are often imported to the region even when they are inappropriate.

Dr Fenton argues that the deforestation of the Highlands is actually the result of natural ecological processes. Earth has a long history of climate changes, with cyclical cool and warm eras. These changes in climate lead to variation in vegetation.

We are currently in the oligocratic phase of an interglacial period, which is the period in which open-ground habitats expand while woodland contracts. This occurs due to many years of heavy rainfall during the previous climate phase, which washes nutrients from the soil, reducing the growth of forests.

This is exacerbated by grazing animals as seedlings and saplings grow more slowly in poor soil protected by fewer thorny shrubs, making them more vulnerable to be eaten. Dr Fenton concludes that the decline of Highland woodlands is more a result of natural climatic and soil change than human deforestation.

So, if sparse woodland is a natural environmental condition in the Scottish Highlands, why is there such a push to introduce trees? And why is it so hard to challenge this?

First and foremost, the woodland lobby has become a juggernaut. As discussed previously, there are major commercial benefits to encouraging industrial forestry. Perhaps more importantly, popular opinion holds that planting trees is an unmitigated good.

There are also many powerful narratives which present reforestation as important to the ecological heritage of the Highlands. One of these narratives is the Great Forest of Caledon, which has long been believed to have cloaked the highland landscape before it was destroyed by humans. This idea was based on historical documentation, but scholars now believe that these sources are misleading and that this forest is, essentially, a myth.

Other powerful narratives that help reforestation efforts go unquestioned are that we have responsibilities to prevent overgrazing, reintroduce montane scrub, reverse damage from industrial exploitation of woods, restore peat bogs, provide the benefits of natural capital to humans, prevent flooding and erosion, mitigate climate change, and bolster biodiversity. While many of these issues contain elements of truth, they don’t tell the whole story or adequately explain how reforestation will achieve these aims.

So, how does Dr Fenton suggest we should view the ecology of the Highlands?

He believes that we should celebrate the unique environment as it is. While it is generally thought that grazing animals should be balanced with woodlands, Dr Fenton asks ‘why?’.

He argues that, as a society, we have become increasingly interested in biodiversity. However, we often wrongly assume that this means establishing a rich diversity of species in all regions. In actuality, the aim of conservation should be for diverse ecosystems and habitats to exist across the planet as a whole, with different regions fostering different and specialist characteristics and species. Hence, conservation means keeping some landscapes species-poor, as adding to them to artificially create local biodiversity reduces overall diversity.

Dr Fenton’s upcoming book, Landscape Change in the Scottish Highlands, develops this argument. It uses case studies to explore further the changes in the Highland landscape since the Battle of Culloden in 1746. He explores how this might develop going forward and ideal scenarios if we make positive ecological decisions.

The slow reduction of fertility over the millennia inevitably resulted in long-term vegetation change, with acid-loving plants such as heather and bog asphodel taking over from more nutrient-demanding species. The Highlands are located on a northern island with a more extreme climate and poor soil, meaning that they are naturally species-poor. This has resulted in the unique and fascinating heaths, acid grasslands and peatlands we have today.

For Dr Fenton, the Highlands are interesting, valuable environments in themselves. Rather than force them to become what we think they should be, we should celebrate their landscapes, their unbroken link to the Ice Age and their position as one of the only regions relatively unchanged by humans.