Misunderstood Landscapes of the Highlands : Moorland

1 There are all shades of what I am going in this short paper to call ‘Moorland’, from the deep peat/ blanket bog of the Flow Country, to peaty soils of varying depth and degrees of wetness. One thing they all have in common is often an almost total absence of trees, even of bushes.

2 The wettest areas, plain bog, used in prehistory to be venerated, as far as we can tell. Offerings, including wooden statues, were made in them for instance in Scotland, while bodies, often apparently human sacrifices, were placed in them in Denmark, as well as other countries.

3 For much of prehistory and history, moorland was appreciated by those who lived by it; it was inhabited by game birds, waterfowl and animals like blue hares, it provided peat for fuel, and, as a recent article in the Geographical magazine has shown (January 2022; ‘Cures from the Bog’), was appreciated for the medicinal plants which grow in such environments.

4 Attitudes, however, began to change, particularly after the 1750s when a mania for agricultural improvement began to sweep up through Britain. In the lowlands, whole landscapes were reorganised, and as part of that, most lowland bogs and damp areas were drained. They were not valued in their natural state, but only in that they could, with considerable effort, be turned into something else.

5 It was therefore inevitable that upland moors would be regarded as of equally little value, unless they, too, could be similarly transformed. Grouse-shooting saved the drier moors, particularly of the Eastern Highlands, although repeated burning increased the heather at the expense of combustible tree and bush species, like Scots pine and juniper. Wetter moors, adjacent to higher hills and mountains, could be incorporated into deer forest, and so might escape at least for a while.

6 But the dislike of open moorland, whether wet or dry, continued. And one rather influential writer, often proclaimed as one of the early Scottish conservationists, really disliked peat bog. Frank Fraser Darling began his working life as an agricultural advisor, was then factor of an estate in Buckinghamshire, before working in animal genetics; it was the lure of hill and island which took him north, and ultimately led to him writing in 1947, the ‘Natural History in the Highlands and Islands’ , a book for which later conservationists came almost to revere him. But the agriculturalist in Fraser Darling meant that his dislike of peat bog showed very clearly: on page 47; ”deadening peat bog”, “awful blanket of peat”. At intervals, there is mention of the possibilities of “improvement” of moorland, and finally, the gloomy Conclusion which contains the much-repeated phrase “man-made desert”. It is important to note that there is no mention here of the great expanses of patterned bog which subsequent environmentalists know and value as ‘The Flow Country’. (Fraser Darling did not get it all right, and we should simply accept that).

7 As I grew up in the Highlands in the 1960s, and after, there was a pretty general assault on all types of moorland, except perhaps for the real grouse moors. In Assynt, the young farmer of Ardvar was seen out almost every day on his JCB, a strange sight in the middle of great open sweeps of countryside, digging long ditches in the level flows. Almost everywhere, there was ‘reseeding’; moorland was ploughed, drained, fertilised and reseeded. And the blanket bogs of Caithness and Sutherland were also being ploughed, where possible, and planted with conifers which few people can have expected would actually ever produce a timber crop.

8 Most of this failed; the long ditches may have carried away some water, but the vegetation, almost up to their very edge, remained obstinately unchanged. This was not surprising; I frequently saw surface water lying on the peat immediately adjacent to the new drains. Many of the ‘reseeds’ failed in time, some quicker than others. Most were invaded by soft rush, which rejoiced in the fertilising and damp climate. The high-level, much-vaunted, extensive ‘reseeds’ at Forsinard also failed, and were then planted with conifers. Conifers, planted on such areas and the deep peat of the Flow Country, (all subsidised with public funds), often grew to a certain point and then simply stopped; others succumbed to wind-throw, or to the ravages of the pine beauty moth.

9 Eventually, conservationists discovered the great bogs of Caithness and Sutherland; someone coined the evocative name, ‘The Flow Country”, and between 1979 and 1986, ‘a sample of some 19% of moorland in Caithness and Sutherland was surveyed quantitively for its breeding birds’. The waders included golden plover, dunlin, greenshank, curlew, snipe, and common sandpiper, with some local populations of lapwing, oystercatcher, redshank and ringed plover, as well as a few rarer species. Waterfowl included black- and red-throated diver, greylag goose, common scoter, wigeon, teal, mallard and red-breasted merganser. Predators included golden eagle, hen harrier, merlin, peregrine, short-eared owl and raven, as well as arctic skua. An important publication by the Nature Conservancy Council, “Birds, Bogs and Forestry” in 1987 highlighted the international importance of these unique landscapes. Crucially, the “man-made desert” was, here at least, replaced by the authoritative statement: “According to evidence from within the peat, the current treeless condition over most of the deep peat area is not due to historical clearance of natural forests by man”.

10 In time, the grants for afforestation of deep peat, and for drainage of hill ground, were removed; the Flow Country was ‘saved’. Some of it is now owned by the RSPB, and money, both public and charitable, has been spent in removing the plantations and blocking the long drains. In addition, and crucially, we now value this huge area of deep peat as one of the great, remaining carbon sinks on Earth; maintaining its integrity is widely recognised as crucial in combatting Climate Change. So far, so good...........you might fairly think.

11 The deep peatlands may have been saved, but the shallower peats and mere peaty soils have not been; in many quarters they remain misunderstood. The ‘man-made desert’ description still appears, but only does so in ignorance of the periods of climatic downturn which the Highlands and Islands have seen, in particular those long centuries from around 2000 BC, when much of the blanket bog and peat transformed the landscape. It is crucial to realise that the changes within the soil profile initiated by much higher rainfall, (the formation of the impermeable ‘iron pan’ and subsequent waterlogging of the upper layers) were not reversible by natural processes. In subsequent climatic optima, the surface of the peat might dry out, and be colonised by pine, but when the precipitation increased again, the pines would die. In significant support of this view, I quote Dr Richard Tipping, writing a chapter in ‘People and Woods in Scotland’ (edited by Professor T C Smout, Edinburgh University Press, 2003). “It is very unlikely that significant parts of the country were converted to permanently altered open ground by human impacts. It is more likely that climate change and soil deterioration were more significant agents, particularly in northern Scotland. Here the catastrophic collapse in pine populations 4000 years ago, opened up entire regions in Sutherland and Caithness which have remained virtually treeless since then”. It is important to note that the long climatic downturn of the Bronze Age will have had a significant effect over the whole of the Highlands and Islands; it will have been less important in the drier eastern Highlands.

12 The significance of the carbon locked up in the deep peat of the Flow Country has widely been recognised, but it seems that, strangely, the fact that carbon is also locked up in vegetation, peat and soil generally does not really seem to have been taken on board. The crucial inference is that the covering of peaty soil over huge areas also represents an important carbon sink. Over recent decades large tracts of peaty soil have been planted, both with conifers and native deciduous trees. As planting trees must aerate and oxidise the soil, releasing carbon dioxide and methane to the atmosphere, I have been arguing for some years (for instance in the Reforesting Scotland Journal), that planting of even peaty soils should cease. This argument was based on first principles and simple logic, and has now been supported by experiment and measuring, (done by others). This, too, has appeared in the Reforesting Scotland Journal: (issue 63, Spring/Summer 2021). From this, I quote Nina Friggens:” Taken together, these results show that planting trees onto heather moorlands does not lead to net ecosystem carbon sequestration 12-39 years after planting”. On 7th April 2020, Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst, had published an article from which I quote one sentence: ”The report comes from the Natural Capital Committee (NCC) which says planting trees into peat bogs would prove a serious mistake”. And an article in the Inverness Courier (11/11/2021) relates the unsettling story of Bunloit Estate above Loch Ness. Although the estate is 86.3% covered by woodland and grassland, it is still currently a net carbon source largely because its peatlands, part of which are under non-native conifer plantation, are leaking carbon to the atmosphere”. (Again, here there is no mention of methane, that other significant greenhouse gas).

13 Despite all this evidence, very briefly summarised above, Simon Hodgson, Chief Executive of Forestry and Land Scotland, in a letter to me (21/6/21) could only confirm that FLS do no longer plant deep peat, ie peat which is over 50 cms in depth. In other words FLS are still planting peaty soils. And, tragically, it is clear that the huge disturbance of soils, peaty or otherwise, which comes with clearfell, will continue well into the future. Worryingly, too, Highland estates are now being bought with a view to planting trees, almost always on peaty soil, for carbon-offsetting. The very clear message in the paragraph above is not being translated into consistent, sustainable policies, let alone action.

14 As an addendum to the above discussion, I would add that I would accept regeneration of native woodlands onto peaty or other soils, as involving less ground disturbance than cultivation, and being required in the context of the other crisis which faces us: the loss of biodiversity in our countryside. Our native woods need room to move.

15 But it seems clear that we are yet far from a general appreciation of ‘moorland’ for itself. Moorland varies of course; some areas are more interesting than others, and many need to recover from past abuses like drainage, overgrazing or reseeding. From a distance, moorland can look very uniform and it takes looking into, before it can be seen that it is a very specialised environment. Part of the problem is our very vocabulary which has overtones (or undertones!) which are unhelpful: soils may be ‘nutrient rich’ (sounds good!) or ‘nutrient poor’ (however hard you try, this sounds bad); the phrases are laden with values which are not truly scientific. We need to rethink the vocabulary used in this context.

16 Looking at an area of ‘moorland’, it will be seen that many of the damper areas have some specialists which supplement their ‘diet’ in various ways: the bog myrtle fixes nitrogen from the air in nodules on its roots, while the diminutive sundew and butterwort trap and consume insects. Heathers cope with differing degrees of dampness; the cross-leaved heath does well in the conditions of the wetter west, with ling and bell heather growing in drier places. When I lived in Assynt, one of my constant walks was in beautiful scenery, under the great western cliffs of Quinag. Everyone would see the spectacular scenery, but they might need to have pointed out the widespread, if small, flowers of the moors under my feet. One is the yellow-to-gold bog asphodel, a diminutive, almost lily-like flower, described in the ‘Flora of Assynt’, (P A and I M Evans, G P Rothero, 2002), as ‘making a sheet of colour in bogs and wet places in summer’. Equally widespread, and rather more significant, perhaps, are the orchids; this particular walk was through expanses of orchids. Among the many species found in Assynt, the most common is the heath-spotted, which, on my walk, was interspersed with the lesser butterfly, and the deep pink, beautifully-scented fragrant orchid on drier patches.

17 The orchids are particularly important, not just because of their beauty, but because of the fact that their minute seeds contain no source of nutrition which would enable them to begin germination. For a detailed discussion of this significant characteristic, see ‘Wilding’, by Isabella Tree (Picador, 2018), a most readable account of this and other important topics. In this particular context, I will just quote a couple of sentences: ” Germination (of orchids) depends entirely on mycorrhizae which colonise the seeds and supply them with food. The appearance of orchids is visible evidence that creeping underground mycorrhizae .......are spreading their web beneath our fields”. This means, surely, that our once-despised moorland, ‘nutrient poor’, must be, at least in some contexts, much more evolved than used to be thought; there must be networks of mycorrhizae throughout the areas where orchids bloom. I will not enlarge further on this topic, but in this important chapter Isabella Tree highlights the fact that “science is only just beginning to get to grips with the universe of soil organisms” ; it would seem sensible to include peaty soils in these investigations. ‘Nutrient poor’ they may be, but just as deserts turn out to be much more complicated and interesting than they appear on the surface, so may the ‘dreaded’ ‘wet desert’ yet surprise us. The chapter which includes the mycorrhizae, goes on to explain the crucial connection between the ‘underground web’ and carbon sequestration.

18 All this means that our areas of moorland should be maintained in ‘favourable condition’. This indicates, for a start, that overgrazing and trampling must be avoided; the living surface of mosses, lichens, liverworts, coarse grasses, heathers, and whatever else, must be kept healthy, or carbon dioxide will escape to the atmosphere. In this particular context, the vexed question of burning must be addressed. This is too big a topic to be covered adequately in a short paper; I did touch on it in ‘Castles in the Mist’ (Saraband, 2016). Burning is, in almost every way, hard to control, but suffice it to say here that high-temperature burns can blanch, char and kill some sphagnum mosses. Frequently repeated burns, as for instance on grouse moors, can certainly do the same, and visibly char the thin, peaty soil, encouraging erosion. While repeated ‘east coast’ burns may be restricted in area compared to intermittent, extensive ‘west coast’ burns, the latter may possibly be less harmful in terms, at least, of the escape of carbon dioxide and methane. A fundamental problem remains; if all burning ceases, the build-up of combustible material can eventually lead to accidental but catastrophic fires. And, with an increase in wild-camping, fires and litter, those will happen.

19 As Climate Change progresses, Scottish moorland will continue to evolve. Most of it may become significantly wetter, (which may increase erosion but encourage the sphagnum moss), and as more acid rain falls on an already acid environment, there are likely to be significant changes at all levels; perhaps particularly involving the critical, but largely unseen, microscopic within-soil level? All this will make large areas even less suitable for planting trees, and further limit the capacity of native woods to regenerate.

20 All too often, anthropogenic alteration of Highland open landscapes is cited as a reason for their treeless state. There is, however, an obligation on those who support this view to examine the archaeological and historical record before adopting this attitude. What evidence is there for the existence of a population at the chosen period, how substantial was it, how far is it reasonable to assume that its influence (animals, harvesting of wood etc.,) actually extended, how long did it last?

21 And, equally, an understanding of geology, and its interaction with a changing climate, is fundamental in working out the evolution of a northern landscape. The results of such exploration in environmental history may, in fact, be eye-opening; the depth of peat which has formed on the porous limestone in Assynt, for instance, means that the influence of climate is difficult to over-state so far north.

7/1/2022.