We're embarking on a project to restore
one of Scotland's most special habitats,
temperate rainforest.
Here, oaks grow covered in
masses of mosses and ferns,
hazel and birch are
coated in rare lichens,
and the mighty Scots
pines can age and grow tall,
creating the perfect conditions for
native life beneath.
But this magical habitat is threatened.
Across Scotland, native
forest cover is scarce,
and native temperate
rainforest is even rarer.
This is due to a mix of factors which
have long been degrading
Scotland's natural systems,
one of them being the widespread felling
or shading out of
native ancient woodlands,
and creation of non-native plantations.
These alien tree species outcompete and
suffocate the native flora,
densely packed in regimented rows.
There's nothing natural
about these plantations.
This is why we're embarking on a project
to remove these trees.
Yes, you heard that right.
Here at Mossy Earth, we
really are cutting a forest,
and by working with the local community,
we'll allow the native and natural way of
life to return to this patch of
Scotland's temperate rainforest.
Our project area is
best accessed by boat,
so one icy and very cold morning, we took
a journey across Loch Arkaig.
I was just busy falling off the boat.
Yeah, oh yeah.
That's it.
Joining us for this video is Isla, our
Mossy Earth biologist who
is our lead on this project.
Gus, the expert botanist who you might
remember from our mountain
birch project here in Scotland,
Cuilean the forever puppy
and Liam and Angella
of the Arkaig Comunity Forest
our patners on this project
who you will hear more from
later in this video.
Here on Arkaig, we've got a few habitats.
Here we've got a lovely little, I guess
it's a wet woodland,
transitional woodland which comes in off
the lock, it's mainly older.
It's quite a few natural habitats, but
what I'm walking into now
is one of the non-natives.
On our project area, there's Larch,
Lodgepole and Sika Spruce,
non-natives you'll
find all across Scotland,
which are typically planted
in these regimented blocks.
It was after the First World War and the
creation of the Forestry Commission
which saw the rapid increase of
commercial plantations.
This meant that the UK had a readily
available stock of timber,
but with every new plantation, Scotland's
natural habitats were fading.
Early on in our trip, we visited one such
place which perfectly
captured this contrast,
this battle between
native and non-native species.
As you can see, we're walking through one
of the lovely non-native plantations.
I don't know whether I'm saddened or kind
of impressed by this
tree, but that's awesome.
Look at that.
It's skipping a shoke.
Skipping a shoke.
I think this oak is one of the most
impressive trees I've seen, not least
because of its stature
or the fact that it's the last standing
relic of a destroyed
habitat, but also because it still
supports hundreds of species. There's
Black-Eyed Susan, if we look
at another bit, especially if
you look up here, we've got all the
little fruit bodies which have little
kind of black bits on
them, so that's why it's called
Black-Eyed Susan, and that's really
typical of these kind of western
oceanic woodlands. It grows on slightly
more acidic back, and then
in amongst that we've got
all sorts of oceanic bryophytes, mosses
and liverworts like Spiny
Featherwort and Western Eawort,
two of the typical ones, but there's a
load of stuff on that
tree. I think I can see some
Sitka growing in there. Yeah, there's a
few not really going on
it. I'll just stop here.
With trees. Yeah, it's a tree growing
trees. Yeah, it's got Holly
on it. Yeah, this is cool.
This is a tree which should be standing
tall above a thriving
native ecosystem. Instead,
it's nearly completely crowded out by
Sitka Spruce, and as we're
walking up the burn back in our
project area, it had a similar feeling.
Small pockets of native life
towered over by non-natives,
and within this area we have the ruins of
an old settlement known as
Ardnesh, a former home to
people who lived here at a time when the
land might have been more
natural, a way of life we're
going to try and get back to. Here's
another pine that's
succumbed to having these non-native
conifers around it. It's a shame because,
see, Scott's pine really
likes light. It's quite light
hungry, and so when these are planted
around it, they obviously grow up, they
shoot up much faster
than the pine camp can beat, so it was
just crowded out and died
because of it. This is the edge of
our project area, right? And here they've
been removing some of the
conifers, and you can just
see these pine trees which are just kind
of breathing new life
again, right? It's magical.
But the thing with this is that right now
it doesn't look great,
does it? No, it doesn't look
good at the minute, but it's kind of,
obviously this isn't an ideal
situation. In an ideal world,
these non-natives never would have been
planted on this Caledonian pine wood
site, but they have been,
so yeah, it's a case of we're going to
have to crack a few
eggs to make an omelette.
I think this is really important to
understand about our project and about
Scotland in general.
To the unsuspecting eye, it's very easy
to see these plantations,
especially from afar, and think,
"Look at all these trees!" Ultimately
mistaking them for something that's good,
something that's natural, but in reality,
the opposite is true. And
what you're seeing here,
this patch of non-natives that have been
felled, although it might not look it,
this is an improvement, a step in the
right direction to
achieving something like this.
So where we've come to now, this is kind
of special. This is a
pretty intact and natural
example of temperate rainforest that is
full of pine trees, old pine
trees. One thing I'm learning
is that temperate rainforest here in
Scotland looks a little bit
different depending on the
type of tree species that you have within
it. We're very much in
the temperate zone still,
but here you've got these massive old
pines, and it just feels completely
different. And this is
kind of a real nice example of what we're
trying to achieve on our project area.
And here, further down the hill, in a
patch of hazel, we found a
very rare species. This is
yellow specklebelly, a lichen which only
grows in old growth
temperate rainforest. It requires
really moist conditions. And throughout
our trip, we found many intriguing
epiphytes, the names given
to the magical plants, fungi, and lichens
that grow on other plants
that seem to be everywhere.
But one of my favorites was this. This is
green satin lichen. To me,
it looked completely alien,
just wrapped around this birch tree. It's
these plants which really
categorize the look and feel
of temperate rainforest. It's not a
habitat which is defined by
the types of tree species which
grow within it. Instead, it's defined by
the environmental and
climactic conditions in which
those trees are found. Unsurprisingly,
temperate rainforests
require high annual rainfall and
pretty consistent average temperatures
where it doesn't get too
hot in the summer nor too cold
in the winter. So when these conditions
occur where there's trees
and where there's woodlands,
you get temperate rainforest and it
creates the perfect
conditions for all of the epiphytes,
all of the bryophytes and lichens and
seemingly everything is
just covered in a wonderful,
massive life. I mean look at this wall,
look at this tree, it really
makes this habitat just feel
really special and I think quite
mythical. I wouldn't be surprised if
we're going to see a couple of
fairies in here. And it's this magic
which is completely lost in
the dense and lifeless non-native
plantations. Removing these trees is
going to be a considered and steady
process. This is for a
couple of reasons, the first being that
we have woodlands throughout the
non-natives. Obviously
we're going to have harvesters coming in
here and taking these trees
out and wood ants like to live
on the edges of woodland. So as we're
coming along here, we'll
just need to make sure that the
workmen, they'll obviously be briefed and
trying their best not to
impact on any of the ants nest,
but they'll be supervised so there'll be
somebody on the ground
making sure that we're
yeah not being as low impact as possible
basically. Isla mentioned
here that we'll have harvesters
in to remove trees and we will do for
large parts of the area
but we'll also be using more
traditional slower and low impact methods
to take the non-natives out.
Simon and his logging horse
Tarzan will be more suitable to these
ecologically sensitive areas
and the more inaccessible and
wetter areas. Removing the trees using
more traditional and
slower methods will give the
land more time to recover and respond to
these changes. This is a
rough map of the area and here
in yellow you can see the areas where we
would like to remove the
non-natives. But it would be
good to get a more detailed map of the
area which is why we are resorting to
mapping things with the
drone. That is after waiting around for
the Scottish mist to disperse. So the fog
in the mist is cleared
now it's kind of all moved down into the
glen and this means that we
can now begin to map this area
with the drone and this should be
interesting and that's
because the drone will be flying
autonomously so it's going to kind of
just follow a transect and
it's going to go up and down the
project area so at least we'll be able to
see it now we've got the
helipad we're taking this kind
of things very seriously now.
You're an experienced drone pilot right Isla? Yes,
incredibly experienced.
It's upside down. Oh sugar okay. Did you
get that in the experience? You're
putting the battery in
upside down. I should probably do that.
Isla did eventually
manage to get the mapping done
and this is the resulting orthophotomosaic.
We've also posted
this in your mossy earth account
where we post frequent project updates
showing stories on the ground as they
happen at the projects.
For us these high quality drone maps are
important to show how the site changes
over time. In addition
to drone mapping on the ground woodland
herbivore impact assessments have been
undertaken at the site
for a number of years and they will be
continued. The success of our
rewielding projects depends on
how well they interact with and are
connected to the people living closest to
them which is why we
are really excited that this project is
being led by the community
specifically Arkaig Community
Forest who are also part of the
Northwoods rewielding network. We're
really excited to be
working with Mossy Earth at Ardenish.
It's a really exciting project for us at
Arkaig Community Forest.
We're removing the non-native timbers
that were planted in the
1970s and that will allow the
native forest to regrow from its refuges.
Yeah Ardenish is important
to Arkaig Community Forest
and the local community because it's
significant in having the remains of an
old settlement there.
It shows us that there have been people
in and working with
the woods for centuries.
So it's got a lovely atmospheric place.
You can almost feel the
people who have lived and worked
there before. So it's special to us to be
able to come in and take
out these plantation trees,
these non-native pines and spruces and to
take it back to start
again for the other trees to
come in and we can start to see how these
people would have lived.
We'd just like to say thank you
to the supporters of Mossy Earth for
their very generous
contribution towards our project.
It's really allowing us to restore the
site which we otherwise
wouldn't be able to do without this
support. And if you're not yet a member
but would like to support
this kind of work then please
consider becoming a member at
mossy.earth. The link is in the
description and pinned
in a comment down below.
I mean look at this, this pine tree just
completely dead. Would
have been surrounded by
non-natives but now they've been removed.
You know it's kind of like a symbol of
what could have been
and when you look across here it does
look kind of sorry for itself you know it
looks like something
of a war zone. You've got trees that look
like they've been like
hacked down and you've got these
trenches where it's been ploughed in the
past and you know whoever
thought it was a good idea to
plant non-natives here in such high
numbers it's just it's just crazy you
know. But you know this
landscape might look sorry for itself but
this is a landscape which is
in recovery and I think over
the next 10, 20, 30 years we'd be really
surprised at how this landscape recovers.
If this is a project
which you want to support then you can.
You can become a Mossy
Earth member where you'll be
contributing to a whole host of different
rewarding projects
all over the world now.
It's really exciting and it's a really
impactful way to
contribute to nature coming back.
So thanks for watching and
I'll see you in the next one.
A day in the life of the...
Oh no! That should be on film.
No, you're in.
Another another filming mission in
Scotland and another Rob Tumble.
Are you all right? Yeah, I'm fine here.