{"id":19477,"date":"2019-03-29T08:23:54","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T08:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/?p=19477"},"modified":"2021-01-19T13:37:59","modified_gmt":"2021-01-19T13:37:59","slug":"monarch-or-menace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.walkhighlands.co.uk\/news\/monarch-or-menace\/","title":{"rendered":"Monarch or Menace?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Scotland\u2019s largest land mammal is also one of its most contentious. Photographer and Director of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, Peter Cairns, explores the ecological and cultural divide over the Monarch of the Glen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The wind is straight out of the north and bites at my face. Cresting the whaleback ridge, a breath-taking panorama emerges: a raw, wild moonscape stretching far beyond a horizon I can barely discern. This unforgiving landscape is quintessentially Scottish. It\u2019s the signature landscape of the Highlands, dominated by hundreds of thousands of acres of bare moorland, rock and bog. In front of me lies Inverpolly Forest, undoubtedly spectacular, but barely a tree, or even a bush to be seen. This is a traditional hunting forest, or more specifically, a deer hunting forest, which by definition contains few trees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 1851 when celebrated artist Edwin Landseer depicted a royal stag against the majesty of the Highlands, he created an evocative and enduring image of Scotland\u2019s hills and glens, thereby sealing a tradition in which wealthy Victorian industrialists came to the Highlands paying handsomely to shoot deer \u2013 particularly big trophy stags. Approaching two centuries later, deer hunting, or stalking, remains at the cultural heart of the Scottish Highlands contributing to land values, providing jobs and for many people, binding rural communities together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nSince the advent of deer\nforests, the uniquely Scottish tradition of open hill stalking has\nchanged little and the barren uplands that cover around 1.5 million\nhectares of Scotland\u2019s wildest country, remain emblematic of a\nromantic period that many wish to retain. For those landowners,\ndeerstalkers, game dealers and paying rifles, red deer and their\ntreeless forests, symbolise what Scotland looks like. Or rather, what\nScotland should <\/em>look\nlike. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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With wolves, lynx and bears long gone, red deer have had plenty of time to proliferate, creating what is routinely referred to as the \u2018deer problem.\u2019 In 1959 when the Red Deer Commission was created, primarily to address damage to agriculture and forestry, red deer numbers were estimated at around 150,000. Thirty years later that figure had doubled and today, informed estimates hover around 400,000. Such a high number of hungry mouths inevitably impacts not only on ground vegetation and emerging woodland, but also on the deer themselves. Forced to adapt to a tenuous life in the open and deprived of access to their natural woodland habitat, Scotland\u2019s hill deer are stunted, many a third smaller than their forest-dwelling cousins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThere are also human costs.\nEach year, 7,000 traffic accidents on Scotland\u2019s roads are\nattributed to deer and the increasing amount of fencing required to\nmanage their movements often comes out of the public purse. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThe \u2018deer problem\u2019 isn\u2019t\nnew. Acclaimed ecologist Frank Fraser Darling, famously described the\nHighlands as a \u201cwet desert\u201d and advised the Red Deer Commission\nthat 60,000 might be an optimum population in Scotland. No fewer than\nseven government-appointed enquiries have sought to address \u2018the\nproblem\u2019, yet despite repeated calls for land managers and stalkers\nto radically reduce deer densities, the numbers in many areas remain\nstubbornly high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nIn recent decades as the\nimpact of over-grazing on the ecological health of the Highlands has\nbecome better understood, an ideological battle between traditional\ndeer managers and those who lament the demise of Scotland\u2019s native\nwoodland \u2013 now covering just 3% of its natural range – has evolved\ninto a seemingly intractable debate. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nOur largest\nliving land mammal is a pawn in what has become a political, rather\nthan ecological, dispute. How many deer there should be, where they\nshould be and to who\u2019s benefit, is not so much an argument over red\ndeer, but over different\nvisions for the future of the Highlands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nEnter stage left: the\nrewilder. Increasingly, large chunks of the Highlands are being\nmanaged, not as traditional sporting estates but as sites for\nlandscape-scale ecological restoration. At the forefront of this\nemerging trend is Anders Holch Povlsen, a Danish entrepreneur, who\nbought the 42,000 acre Glenfeshie Estate in the Cairngorms ten years\nago and has subsequently acquired several further landholdings,\ngiving him custodianship over 200,000 acres, all badged under his\ncompany Wildland Ltd. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThe history of Glenfeshie is\nnot so different from that of other Highland estates. For 200 years\nor more, the land was valued according to its potential for deer\nstalking, grouse shooting and salmon fishing. Fencing was widely used\nto keep deer away from commercial forestry plantations but on the\nfloor of the Glen, remnant ageing Scots pines retained a toehold in\nthe shallow soils. Dick Balharry, the eminent countryman recognised\nthe imminent loss of these veteran trees back in the sixties, and\nopenly condemned the effect of high deer numbers, pointing to a\ncomplete absence of young trees. It wasn\u2019t until the turn of the\nmillennium however, that a growing body of environmental legislation,\nfinally ignited change in Glenfeshie and a significant but\ncontentious deer cull took place on the estate. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nThomas MacDonell is Wildland\u2019s\nConservation Director: \u201cThe change on the ground happened very\nquickly and with a ready-made seed source from the ageing trees, a\nyoung forest quickly started to grow. People talk about the trees\ncreeping up the hill but I would suggest that if you relieve them of\ngrazing pressure, they actually sprint up the hill.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nPovlsen\u2019s ambition to\ncombine landscape-scale habitat restoration with wider economic\nbenefits for local communities is a model that is now enticing other\neco-philanthropists. Despite the huge size of these private estates,\nthey remain as relative dots on the map. But increasingly, those dots\nare creeping closer to other dots. Established woodland regeneration\nschemes run by conservation groups and government agencies, such as\nthose in Abernethy Forest, Creag Meagaidh in Lochaber and Beinn Eighe\nin Wester Ross, are creating a growing, inter-connected network of\nlandholdings, all committed to a new model for Highland land\nmanagement. Moreover, these initiatives have all shown that despite\nlong-held perceptions to the contrary, trees can grow in the\nHighlands without the need for intrusive fencing, as long as grazing\npressure is controlled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nBut what does that control\nlook like? How many deer is too many? There is a sizeable body of\nresearch that can now answer that question from an ecological\nperspective. It is generally accepted that to allow ground flora and\nwoodland to regenerate naturally, or planted trees to survive, deer\ndensities need to be no higher than 5 per sq.km. The regeneration of\nwoodland in Glenfeshie has taken place with red deer at around 2 per\nsq.km. On some traditional stalking estates, 40 animals per sq.km. is\nnot unusual. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nColin Murdoch is an\nexperienced deer stalker on Scotland\u2019s west coast and laments the\nlarge-scale culls that have taken place in recent years: \u201cI\nhate what has become the ethnic cleansing of red deer.\u201d Colin is\nhighly suspicious of the motivations of conservationists and\ngovernment agencies forcing their will on rural life. \u201cThey want to\nsee the end of sporting estates although they\u2019ll never admit it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colin\u2019s perspective is not uncommon amongst traditional deer managers and although his conviction reflects a deep affection for the animals that have shaped his life, it also reveals a resistance to change; change that he sees as a threat rather than an opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nAnother\nrewilder who has attracted much media attention over the last decade\nis Paul Lister, owner of Alladale Wilderness Reserve in Sutherland.\nAlladale wants to regenerate its native woodland but is surrounded by\nestates with high deer numbers, all wedded to the traditional land\nmanagement model. Red deer don\u2019t recognise estate boundaries and\nthe man in the crosshairs charged with reducing the Reserve\u2019s red\ndeer herd to an \u2018acceptable\u2019 level is Head Ranger, Innes\nMacNeill. \u201cWe\nall want healthier deer living in a better habitat but how do you\ntell a stalker that has worked all his life to nurture his deer\nforest, that he has too many? It\u2019s like telling someone their\nlife\u2019s work has been for nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nSo does it\nall come down to numbers? Deer are browsing animals and at high\ndensities, they will overwhelm the vegetation and eat all\nregenerating saplings, leaving just older trees to die off one by one\nover time. In\nthe absence of natural predators \u2013 for now at least \u2013 deer\npopulations therefore need managing if Scotland\u2019s wild places are\nto reach their full ecological potential and that as a country,\nScotland is to expand its woodland cover, currently one of the lowest\nin Europe. The expertise and experience of professional deerstalkers,\nis key to this but the philosophy behind deer stalking will need to\nmove away from the emphasis on the trophy, to a more rounded hunting\nexperience in an increasingly natural setting, in the company of a\nwell-paid professional guide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nFlurries of snow come and go\nas I crest the summit of Stac Pollaidh and reflect on the vast\nlandscape below me. A golden eagle circles on a distant thermal and\nthe occasional chatter of a red grouse carries on the breeze. This\nlandscape is seductive. It is raw and superficially at least, it is\nwild. It is also loved by the majority of people who live and work in\nit. And those who visit it. Yet this land hides a history of\necological wounds that few people see, simply because they\u2019re not\nconditioned to look. Centuries of felling, burning and over-grazing\nhave led to endless miles of treeless moorlands so often held up as\npostcards of a nature-rich Scotland. As a society we\u2019ve somehow\narrived at a point where we celebrate, cherish and even actively\nconserve these ecological vacuums that support not only fewer species\nthan they once did \u2013 than they could again \u2013 but in many parts of\nthe Highlands, fewer people. This landscape could be more. So much\nmore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nI raise my binoculars and\ntrace the path of a deer fence, which bullishly cuts across the\nmoorland into the distance. The fence has been built to keep deer in,\nor perhaps to keep deer out. Either way, the fence itself is\nsymbolic, as it mirrors the divisive debate over what this landscape\nshould be. For now, it is held in suspension. The potential for an\necologically richer future across much of the Highlands, is stuck\ninside a cultural fence. It\u2019s a fence that has less to do with red\ndeer and more to do with people and their deep-seated belief systems.\nThe deer problem, if it exists, is actually a people problem, 200\nyears in the making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\nThere is common ground.\nEveryone shares a desire to see healthy red deer living in a healthy\nlandscape and most would prefer them to be viewed as neither Monarch\nnor Menace, but as an integral part of a naturally functioning\necosystem. If we\u2019re to break out of the fence however, we need to\nsee the Scottish landscape differently. We need to recognise its\nshortcomings and stretch our perspective further than land being\nvalued solely according to how many animals can be shot on it.\nPerhaps then, Scotland\u2019s deer forests will be full of trees. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SCOTLAND: The Big Picture<\/a> is the first organisation in Scotland wholly dedicated to rewilding advocacy and communications. Our mission is to help drive transformational change towards a vast network of rewilded land and sea across Scotland, where wildlife and communities can flourish.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scotland’s largest land mammal is also one of its most contentious. Photographer and Director of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture, Peter Cairns, explores the ecological and cultural divide over the Monarch of the Glen. <\/p>\n

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