Reforestation in the Cairngorms: a vision for the future

The RSPB manages a major nature reserve at Abernethy in north-east Scotland, which covers 13,8000 hectares (ha) from the Spey Valley up to the arctic-alpine plateau of the Cairngorms at 1,300m. It’s a place where Red Squirrels scamper through ancient trees, weird and wonderful lichens cloak gnarled branches and Ospreys dive for fish in the loch.  

The reserve includes over 2,000 ha of remnant ancient native pinewood, pine plantations, upland birchwood and areas of regenerating forest. That might sound like a lot, but it represents just a fragment of the vast forest that once covered this area.

As a result of historical land clearance for farming and tree felling for timber, isolated pockets of habitat are all that remain of this ancient forest. That’s why we’re working to restore pine and broadleaf woodland to its natural range and altitudinal limit, giving wildlife the space it needs to thrive. 

Elsewhere at Abernethy, we’re restoring ancient and nationally scarce bog woodland, where areas of peatland co-exist with native pine and broadleaf trees. 

As well as restoring the nature reserve at Abernethy, we’re also part of Cairngorms Connect – the largest landscape restoration project in Britain. Alongside our partners Wildland Limited, Forestry and Land Scotland, and NatureScot, we’re working to restore native woodland across 60,000ha of the Cairngorms, in places where trees have long since gone.

The forest in this area is now just a shadow of what it once was, with regenerating trees snuffed out by burning or nibbled by grazing deer and sheep before they can take hold.  

To improve regeneration and give saplings a fighting chance of maturing, the partnership is reducing the numbers of Red and Roe Deer. This will help native pinewood and broadleaf trees to spread from the valley bottom up the hillsides. 

We are also trying to speed up the reforestation process by planting broadleaf saplings, which in time will become a seed source, allowing new trees to grow and spread. Thanks to the hard work of our partners, staff and volunteers, native broadleaf trees are being re-established in areas where they have been missing for years, proving that trees will grow in even the harshest of environments provided grazing animals are kept at low densities.

As well as helping new areas of forest to establish, we’re also working to manage existing patches of Caledonian pine forest, which are home to iconic birds like Capercaillie, Black Grouse and Scottish Crossbills.  

Here we’re using innovative technology in the form of ‘Nofence’ collars to manage the effects of grazing and trampling by hardy Highland cattle. These collars alert the cattle when they reach a virtual boundary, allowing us to keep them in a designated area without the need for physical fences, which are costly and time-consuming to put up, and pose a collision risk for some wildlife, particularly Capercaillie and Black Grouse.

As they move around, the hefty Highland cattle break up stands of leggy heather and help to create a more varied mix of ground vegetation. This provides ideal feeding and breeding habitat for Capercaillie, which are largely confined to the old Caledonian pinewoods of north-east Scotland. In the past, this grazing and trampling would have been carried out by a range of large grazing mammals that are now extinct.  

Beyond the tree line, we’re working with our partners to restore degraded upland peatlands across a vast area, in some of the remotest parts of upland Scotland. These bogs are in a poor state because of drainage, burning and grazing, and as a result they are leaking carbon into the atmosphere and into the water.  

Here we’re revegetating areas of bare peat, slowing the flow of water off the land, and creating conditions that will allow the peatland to recover, so that it can once again lock up carbon as peat.  

Restoring these carbon-rich peatlands is crucial for reducing carbon emissions and tackling climate change. Find out more about this vital work in our film.