At the beginning of the year, Michaela and I sat down to think about what we would seek to explore in our work for the coming year, and we chose something that is so important to us that perhaps it was no choice at all – atlantic rainforest. Our work in Seatree will explore this and we hope to use some of these pieces in an exhibition in the autumn- more on this at a later date!

What did the Cowal hills once look like?

It is a question we have often pondered when considering the landscape that earlier generations would have lived in, for example the people who lived here. We know they shared the landscape with bears, wolves, lynx, bison and wild boar.

We have good reason to think they looked NOTHING like this.

Something transformed the mountains, hills and valleys of Argyll from verdant deep forest and high scrub lands to barren marshy grass lands.

From pre-history, as soon as our ancestors started to settle this land after the ice receded (around 9 thousand years ago), people began clearing space in forrest. In many cases, there is evidence that they continued to live in a mixed forest landscape, but as the tide of human activity turned towards farming rather than subsistance hunting, they cleared more more. As the forest was cut down there was less room for the wild and animals were hunted and squeezed out of their habitats- some deliberately because they posed a threat, others because they were a readily available source of protein. However, none of this is the real reason for our clear and empty hills.

The hills are empty because of grazing animals.

They became that way with the introduction of sheep and- more laterly – with the increase in numbers of deer. Both sheep and deer have an infamous part to play in our history – the Highland clearances were after all the process of replacing people with sheep (because they are more valuable) and the great shooting estates continue to keep Scotland as the most unequal (in terms of land ownership) in the whole of Europe. After all, we live in a country in which over fifty percent of private land is owned by four hundred and thirty two people, and in which their priorities dominate land use in ways unimaginable elsewhere. Vast tracts of this land are still reserved for hunting, shooting and fishing.

Of course, it is only fair to mention that some amongst the four hundred and thirty two have laudable ambitions towards rewilding and landscape restoration. This feels both important and frustrating, as if the only hopes we have are the whims and hobby horses of the ultra rich.

The interesting thing about living in Cowal at this time, is that the hills above Dunoon, thanks to the industry of some local entrepeneurs, will be coming in to public ownership. The Dunoon project is an ambitious plan to regenerate the local economy through tourism. Many of us also hope that it might be an opportunity to regenerate our ecosystems too. We think that we can be even more ambitious!

Scotland’s lost rainforests

Imagine a time when Cowal was covered in pristine forest. A time before major clearances, charcoal production and sheep farming. A time before shooting estates. A time when the forest did not need to be ‘managed’ as it functioned as a balanced whole.

The Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest is a campaigning organisation set up to bring together efforts to preserve the remnants of this precious habitat;

Scotland’s rainforest is one of our most precious habitats. It is as important as tropical rainforest, but even rarer. Yet few people in Scotland know it exists and fewer still know how globally significant it is.

Scotland’s rainforest is made up of the native woodlands found on our west coast in the ‘hyper-oceanic’ zone. Here, high levels of rainfall and relatively mild, year-round temperatures provide just the right conditions for some of the world’s rarest bryophytes and lichens.

But Scotland’s rainforest is in trouble. As little as 30,000 hectares remain – a mere 2% of Scotland’s woodland cover and only one fifth of the area that has climatic conditions suitable for rainforest.

If we don’t start taking serious and urgent action to support and protect our rainforest, we face the risk of losing this internationally important habitat completely. And the longer we wait, the harder it will become.

These efforts are essential to preserve the precious remnants within Argyll, like Crinan wood;

There are remnants in Cowal also, but these are not well mapped, or well understood – which almost certainly means that the usual destroyers – deer, invasive plants and sitka spruce plantations – is likely to be a problem for their regeneration.

For example, the banks of Loch Striven, or the old birch and scrub oak stands above Colintraive.

Then there is the magical Glenan wood, which through community action has been set free from invasive rhodedendons and has quickly become a place that I return to as one might to a cathedral. You can even do this;

Landscape restoration

Preservation is vital, but if we are to make any progress towards avoiding mass extinction and run away cimate change, we must also be thinking about how we can regenerate our landscapes.

Fortunately, this is not as difficult as it sounds. Mostly it is about removing/controlling those (mostly man made) factors that get in the way of nature doing what it wants to do anyway, along with selective, careful re-introduction of keystone species that will accelerate trophic cascades.

We believe that there are unique opportunities for ambitious land resoration in Cowal, right now. We need to start a real local discussion about what this might look like, and how we can use community resources and activism to achieve this.

Lets do something!

Many of us who have been concerned about our environment have sometimes struggled to feel hopeful in the face of so many bad news stories, and the apparent innability of our political systems to respond to the emergency in a proportional way. Because of this, it can be hard to stay actively engaged. The good news however is that IT IS NOT TOO LATE to work towards landscape restoration. This includes Cowal, with our ‘perfect’ climate and the memory in our soils of the rainforests that were here no so long ago.

This webinar might well be helpful.