The Cairngorm estate close to Royal Balmoral home hits 2,000-acre tree milestone
Native trees have been growing on their own alongside other activities including sheep grazing and deer stalking.
A Scottish estate has proven large-scale natural regeneration of trees can happen among other land uses as it reaches a new milestone.
Invercauld Estate, which neighbours the royal family’s home at Balmoral in upper Deeside, manages some 12,000 acres as woodland, one of the largest such areas in the Cairngorms National Park.
Using GPS and mapping technology, employees have been, since 2017, measuring areas where new, naturally regenerating trees started to appear.
This year, they surpassed the 2,000-acre milestone with 2,082 acres mapped of native trees that have sprung up on their own. The area is equivalent to 1,180 football pitches or nine settlements the size of nearby Ballater.
Estate manager Angus McNicol said the progress had shown that natural regeneration could happen in areas with other land use on the estate, including sheep grazing and deer stalking.
“One of the most interesting things about the recent natural regeneration at Invercauld is that this has not occurred in the absence of other social and commercial activities in the same place,” he told The Scotsman.
“Our objectives in managing Invercauld can be summarised broadly as being to seek the sustainability of not just the environment, but of the economy and the local community as well. These three elements are all inter-linked and reliant on one another.
“People sometimes think of the countryside can only be used for one thing or another.
“That has lead to a lot of polarisation in discussions about land management in recent years, particularly in upland Scotland. I think what the emerging new native woodland at Invercauld demonstrates is that several land uses can operate in one place, with more overall benefits resulting.”
An example of this, he said, was looking to some of the tree regeneration as potential timber.
“As the vast majority of timber used in the UK is still imported, I don’t believe we can afford as a country not to make use of trees in this way if we want to claim we are being sustainable,” Mr McNicol said.
“The key is that new trees replace those that are felled.”
The estate manager said apart from some non native larch, the majority of the trees were native to Scotland, with the main being Scots pine followed by silver birch, willow and some aspen.
Mr McNicol, who has worked at the estate for the past decade, said: “Other activities that happen in our emerging new woodlands include sheep farming, deer stalking with guests, way-marked paths and tracks both for the public and guided tours and, most recently, carbon capture and storage.
“Not all land is used for all of these things and the extent to which it is varies. However, it is vital to us that these emerging new woodlands do not just meet environmental goals, but provide a wide range of social and commercial benefits at the same time.”
John Mackie, Scottish Forestry’s operations manager for Deeside, said: “It’s great to see the excellent work that has been undertaken by Invercauld’s forestry team coming to fruition.
“I have been observing the progress of the naturally regenerating woodlands on the estate for over a decade now and it’s amazing to see the positive impacts on the landscape, ecological diversity and recreational use in what is in forestry terms a relatively short timescale.
“The estate should be rightfully proud of what has been achieved and Scottish Forestry has been pleased to help support this work through the Forestry Grant Scheme.”
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