After the last ice age, Scotland was covered in woodland. “When the Romans came to Scotland they came as far north as they dared, which was not very far,” says Doug, “They looked across up to the north and described a huge wood, Silver Caledonia.”

But the effects of sheep and deer grazing in particular, over millennia, has been catastrophic for the trees. Now just 5% of Scottish woodland is native, and there are huge areas of upland where there are literally no trees at all. “It’s not just that there is a scattering, there are none,” says Doug, “And that’s an entirely false and denuded landscape, which we need to reverse.”

We know how essential forests are at a planetary level for their capacity to suck up carbon and help mitigate the climate crisis, but I ask Doug why they’re so important locally? “When there’s flooding if you look up in the catchment of where that water is coming from, you’ll find a landscape without trees, rain falling on moorland and grazing pasture, where run off is 50 times greater than in a woodland environment. Woods act like sponges and help water get into the ground and they capture an awful lot of rain by themselves.”

“Nature didn’t give a hoot about the virus. It just carried on doing its thing”

The Forestry Commission has planted lots of Sitka spruce, but it isn’t native nor is it great for soil or wildlife; monoculture is rarely good for biodiversity. “We’re currently in a biodiversity crisis which nothing is being done about,” says Doug. “Restoring native woodland supports varied and interesting habitats and provides a rich biodiversity, which makes the whole forest healthier, more resilient and robust.”

But for Doug there is also a deeper point to it all, which is that humans love trees. “It’s hardwired into us that we’re savannah creatures, but we want to be in woodlands. That’s where people go for walks, it inspires artwork. There is massive cultural importance in woodland and we’re missing lots of them from our landscapes. So many people in the country have never experienced a real native woodland.”

The biggest challenge Trees for Life face in their efforts to rewild the forest at Dundreggan is the roe deer, who love to eat the younger trees. “The species that have thrived here are mostly silver and downy birch, as these are the least palatable species to deer,” he says.  

I ask Doug if lynx would be dangerous to people hillwalking in the Highlands, but he doesn’t believe so. “Lynx are ambush predators, who are quite secretive and don’t usually operate outside woodland. They have small populations of lynx in France, Switzerland and Scandinavia, but no one ever sees them.”

There is quite a bit of resistance to bringing back lynx coming from many quarters, not just farmers, who worry about their sheep, but Doug says: “The last top predator we lost was the wolf in the 17th century, so people don’t really understand what they are and how they operate. They see a big carnivore think that’s going to eat me, but that isn’t what happens. As an example, there are no recorded wolf attacks in Europe for the past 500 years.”

“The pressure from the outside world disappeared”

Aside from dealing with deer, Trees for Life don’t plan to manage their woodland in any specific way, instead adopting a more natural, rewilding ethos. “We want to give it a big start and let it do whatever it wants to do,” says Doug. They plan to open a Rewilding Visitor Centre to the public in 2022 so people can learn more about this.

Even though Doug thought he knew Dundreggan pretty well, the experience of holing up there during lockdown still brought fresh insight. “There was a very strong feeling that we were isolated. We usually have heaps of volunteers passing through, but nobody was coming to visit. And the road to Skye, which isn’t very busy anyway, went totally quiet. It was amazing actually, the pressure from the outside world disappeared and we felt officially in this bubble of just growing trees and keeping ourselves mentally healthy.”

The group kept a loose eye on the virus developments but avoided reading too much news and Doug doesn’t have a tv anyway, preferring to read books. When we spoke, he was midway through Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, a book about underground fungal networks and he delights in telling me about a tropical fungus that has evolved to control the minds of ants and make them its slaves.

Doug felt their time in lockdown brought them into nature even more than usual and gave them more time to notice what was going on. His wife did the same walk up a hill every day and documented the colour changes of the vegetation and how the plant and flower structures shifted subtly over time. They found rare orchids, noticed new and fresh rooting behaviour from the feral pigs, and sometimes saw owls, though the highlight from those days was undoubtedly finding the first golden eagle chick on the site for over 40 years. “That whole day is burnt in my memory,” says Doug.

The team also had their own Olympics with potato sack races and cycling to make up for the actual Games being cancelled, which was a great morale booster. Are they closer as a group now? “We’re like a little team anyway but I do think there was an extra bond.”

“I learnt a lot,” says Doug, “And one thing that struck us all the time was that nature didn’t give a hoot about the virus. It just carried on doing its thing, which brought it home that this is a human problem.”

“We got more of a feeling of how vulnerable we are and how reducing our contact with nature is a big problem for us as a species.” By restoring native woodland in the Scottish Highlands and educating visitors on the benefits of natural forest at their Rewilding Centre, Trees for Life, at least, are doing their best to help turn that around.

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