<
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2023/jun/19/the-scenery-bursts-into-life-making-scotland-wild-again>
"Birdcall breaks the morning silence as I potter past the stretching Scots
pines and ancient oaks of Dundreggan, the rewilded estate of the charity Trees
for Life in Glenmoriston in the Scottish Highlands. Woodpeckers drum and
cuckoos call from on high, while around the trail, finches and thrushes flutter
from tree to tree, avoiding beard lichens dripping off the branches.
I’m the first one out in the forest this morning (or the first human, at
least), a feat easily achieved when you have spent the night here. The
Dundreggan Rewilding Centre, the first of its kind in the world, opened in
April and includes An Spiris, an L-shaped accommodation block with 20
double/twin rooms and a spacious communal area.
“Nature shouldn’t be exclusive,” Laurelin Cummins-Fraser, the director of the
rewilding centre, told me over a brew the day before. “This is a gateway to the
landscape.”
Dundreggan is Trees for Life’s 4,047-hectare (10,000-acre) example of
“rewilding” in action. The tree nursery grows thousands of saplings for
planting, from rare aspen to montane tree species, and the landscape has
changed dramatically since it bought the estate in 2008, with nature
flourishing and ecosystems restored. Back then it was (like much of the
Highlands) heavily overgrazed by deer, the numbers of which are kept
unnaturally high on many Scottish estates for sport shooting – a trend dating
back to Victorian times.
After 15 years of rewilding at Dundreggan – and a reduction in deer numbers
from about 16 a sq km to five (the ideal number for natural woodland
regeneration is two to five in each sq km but in some parts of Scotland it
exceeds 60) – there are now more than 4,000 species of plants and animals here,
including rare globeflowers and red squirrels. Golden eagles even returned for
the first time in 40 years in 2020 after an eyrie was built by the ecologist
Roy Dennis – and chicks followed."
Via
Future Crunch:
<
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-malaria-belize-crime-mexico-city-bison-montana/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
