THE chief executive of Scottish Natural Heritage, Francesca Osowska, is “determined to lead by example” in the search for nature-based solutions to the climate change emergency ("State of nature may be critical but it’s not too late to act...", The Herald, October 12). Unfortunately her announcement that SNH is intending to plant 20,000 native trees on the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve is not a good example of leadership. These are the wrong trees in the wrong place.
Beinn Eighe was the UK’s first National Nature Reserve, established in 1951, and has been the focus for a huge amount of scientific study and conservation management since then. Today, it is crystal clear that the primary effort required at Beinn Eighe is the continued control of red deer grazing pressures so that the reserve’s magnificent remnants of the old Caledonian pine forest can be replenished and expanded through natural seeding, not planting. This ancient Scots pine ecosystem has survived through natural regeneration for thousands of years, from the last Ice Age. Its historical and biological values and opportunities for public enjoyment and study should not be compromised or degraded through planting or other intensive management techniques.
Ms Osowska is, however, absolutely correct to emphasise the significant role that SNH can play in 2020 in promoting nature-based solutions for environmental problems. The Scottish Government and its agencies will have an unprecedented opportunity to demonstrate these solutions to government leaders and their officials from across the world as they meet in Scotland for the forthcoming UN conferences on climate change and biodiversity enhancement. Trees are a key part of the solution, either planted or naturally regenerated. This will require, as Ms Osowska says, “a radical change in how we use Scotland’s land with a transformation in policy and incentives”. That radical change must start with new regulations to control red deer population size, as is the norm in all other European countries and North America. This has to be combined with new financial support measures for landowners. Encouragement to plant trees in the lowlands and on those moorlands denuded of tree cover by centuries of overgrazing and burning, plus new incentives to encourage natural regeneration in all areas where native woodland survives, is an essential pre-requisite. SNH at Beinn Eighe, in combination with surrounding landowners, should be pioneering this new approach.
Dave Morris, Kinross.
I’M curious about a statistic Dr Charles Wardrop has iterated, and reiterated (Letters, October 8 &14) that “the UK’s man-made CO2 output is negligible at 0.3 per cent of 1 per cent of the world total” – that is, 0.003 per cent of the total. According to the EDGAR database created by the European Commission and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (2018) the UK’s percentage Fossil C02 emissions for 2017 were 1.02 per cent of the world total. Therefore according to EDGAR, Dr Wardrop is underestimating the UK contribution by a factor of more than 333.
Should Dr Wardrop reiterate his statistic once more, perhaps he could append a scientific reference.
Dr Hamish Maclaren, Stirling.
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