The right tree in the right place?

Scotland is a sparsely-wooded country - but it has not always been so. This has led to much debate about whether we should expand the area of woodland, particularly in the uplands. Government policy    is that the area should be expanded over the coming decades as part of our response to climate change. However, the all-important questions of what type of woodlands and where they might be, have still to be answered.

There is little doubt that much of the concern comes from what many consider to have been inappropriate forestry practice in the past. Perhaps the best (or worst) example of this was the rapid and extensive planting of non-native conifers (mostly sitka spruce and lodgepole pine) on the blanket bogs of the Flow Country in the 1980s. Large areas of these plantations have now been felled with a view to restoring the bogs to their former glory  . It is also now Forestry Commission policy that such planting should not be repeated.

Other people wish to retain open moorland habitats for other reasons. For some it is because they believe that their unwooded state is a natural condition. It also makes Scotland different from other countries and is part of the reason why many overseas' tourists holiday here. For others, it is because woodland does not fit with their other management objectives, for example grouse shooting, deer stalking or extensive sheep grazing.

As is often the case, there is some merit in all of these positions, but it is also the case that we know from historical records and can see with our own eyes, that some of our native woods have declined, or disappeared, in the recent past.

Also, woodlands do, or at least can, contribute to Scotland's store of carbon - in the trees, in timber products and in the soil. They can also help intercept rainfall. This helps protect the soil thus preventing it from being washed into rivers. They can also help reduce the risk or impact of floods. Woodlands also have their own wildlife, quite different from that of the open moors, with some species, such as black grouse, favouring the boundary between the two.

It seems likely that we will see some more woodland in the uplands in the future. Not the great ranks of alien conifers which characterise much of Argyll and Galloway, but native or mixed woodland of an appropriate scale and sympathetic to a range of interests and needs.