Barking up the Wrong Tree

October 7, 2011

Barking up the Wrong Tree

SONY DSC — A sitka plantation in the process of being "scalloped"

The woodland surrounding the Chayne is managed commercially. Big subsidies and tax breaks were being offered a few decades ago to anyone who wanted to plant trees, and as a result, one of the most devastating changes in land use that Britain has ever seen began to permanently destroy thousands of acres of the nation’s uplands. White hill and poor quality grazing land across the country was ploughed and stacked with evergreen tree species, and the consequences have been dire for many iconic bird species, including black grouse, red grouse and snipe.

Many of these commercial plantations were made up of scots pine and douglas fir, but Dumfries and Galloway was chosen for vast quantities of sitka spruce, a foreign species of tree that is not only aesthetically dire but offers almost nothing in the way of food or habitat for British wildlife. Planted in such thick concentration, these spruces have shaded a quarter of the entire land area of Dumfries and Galloway, smothering thousands of acres of peat bog and heather moorland into non existence. Scots pine, norway spruce and douglas fir all have some merit in their ability to provide wildlife with food and shelter, but sitka spruce is little more than a tall and unpleasant weed with nothing to say in its favour other than the fact that it grows quickly. It creates thick and impenetrable stands which act as physical barriers across the landscape. I don’t believe that anyone could walk through sitkas and claim that the experience was any more than deeply unpleasant, painful and boring.

Thanks to research carried out in areas where the chief crop species of tree is scots pine or douglas fir, scientists have recently discovered that managing woodland sensitively can be an advantage to black grouse. Studies in Perthshire and North Wales showed that harvesting trees on rotation created a moderate quality habitat for the birds, and breaking up the “hard” woodland edge into a series of bays offered birds shelter and security from predators. There’s no doubt that some forests can be made to work for black grouse, but it depends hugely on what the forest is made up of. “Scalloping” is great in scots pine forests, where the aim is to create a broad moorland margin of trees at various stages, and scalloped larches adjacent to wet bogs is ideal for greyhens in the run up to the breeding season, but the management technique is not what is good about these habitats. It is the species that is being managed.

When the results of these research studies were applied to forests made up of sitka spruce, commercial foresters worked themselves into a state of great excitement. Finally they believed that they could morally justify their destruction of quality moorland habitats by building black grouse into their man made jungles, quite irrespective of the fact that sitka trees above the age of four or five years are totally incapable of supporting the birds. As is currently taking place on the boundary of the Chayne, attempts are being made to manage sitka spruce for black grouse by “scalloping” forest edges and by felling on rotation. They might as well be trying to build black grouse habitat out of plasticine and fox shit. If you don’t use tree species that are amenable to black grouse, it doesn’t matter whether they are “scalloped” or harvested on rotation. The birds won’t take to them unless there is either a preponderance of larches, scots pines or trees which allow some light in to the undergrowth.

In Galloway, there is no such thing as a small plantation. The Chayne is surrounded by a continuous mass of more than eight thousand acres of sitka spruce trees. No wonder black grouse are in dire straits when they have been boxed in by a foreign tree species that is useful only to provide a perch for the occasional goshawk. Scalloping the edges of sitka plantations may be a publicity coup for some ecologist, but if commercial forest managers would concentrate on using environmentally beneficial tree species in their plantations, I wouldn’t be living in a county with less than two hundred lekking blackcock.

And if they really wanted to help black grouse, they would be shooting foxes and trapping crows. But what do I know?

Land

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gallowayfarm

One response to “Barking up the Wrong Tree”

Chris Land

October 8, 2011 at 11:15 am

I am very interested in the industry and in recent meetings and seminars have heard stirring eulogies to the benefit of the forests in the worthy battle against climate change and also the benefits they have to Black Grouse when winters are cold, as the poor birds must have access to these vast forests to survive. The problem that i have with these happy scenarios is that as you may know the benefits for rotational forestry as against using soils in carbon capture is at best unproven and in regard to Black Grouse they don’t happen. No-one apparently knows why Black grouse avoid the places like the plague given that we are told by “experts” they desperately need the forests for survival. Reading books by Abel Chapman a very good victorian sportsman/naturalist who wrote passionately about the wildlife of his beloved Border hills it is clear he was also a great practical joker too, for surely he must be joking in his descriptions of Black Grouse as a bird of the prairie, a bird of white hill with straggling patches of Birch and forming packs of 100+ in the autumn in the same locality that we are now informed by the “modern educated experts” that the species is a woodland grouse and we must all spend our time and money planting trees to safeguard their future. Despite the best efforts of FCS and others Black Grouse are nearly extinct in the areas straggling the English Scottish Border and do not appear to be responding to their habitats which begs the question was Abel a joker or are the modern experts jokers, i think on reflection the latter although the joke is not one that i find amusing.

The problem with most modern experts with the exception of a few who you can guess work for a particular charity is they can’t differentiate between straggling patches of Birch in a landscape with sculpting the edges of a vast monocultural Shitka forest, like your articles headline barking up the wrong tree or just plain barking.

At these recent meetings it as become apparent that after spending 8 million of taxpayers money across Scotland on Black Grouse (i kid you not) questions are starting to being asked of this and the benefits accrued from it. This is unfortunate given that most of this money as been spent on what i can with some certainty say will never improve things for Black Grouse, is superfluous to their requirements and in the case of woodland planting will cause further fragmentation of currently open ground habitat ultimately leading to local extinctions.

While on the one hand we must listen to the experts eulogising on native woodland creation and we must marvel at their vision in dragging the uplands back to the days of yore which presumably must have been utopia for wildlife, i have learnt that we must also not get too inquisitive as to what actual species these new woodlands are benefitting. Unless i’m mistaken the suite of upland birds that are fast diminshing from our uplands and on that basis should be afforded a degree of consideration in upland land use strategies and consequent decision making processes do not appear to be woodland species at all, rather they would appear to be ground nesting species of heath and moor and grasslands. A lack of knowledge at ministerial level would seem to be benefitting the current focus, one can only hope someone can be returned to power who can rectify this matter

The excellent wildlife reserve created by that wonderfully nice charity Borders Forest Trust “Carrifran wildwood” is i’m reliably told a role model for upland land use. I’m unaware of the target species in this sylvan idyll, maybe a rare lichen or a butterfly perhaps, but from my own personal experience a certain kudos for the site was sought on the basis of the superb Black Grouse habitat it afforded – indeed i was often informed of this happy fact while experiencing expert opinion on Black Grouse issues. Only when i actually found that since 2007 the number of Black Grouse at Carrifran is somewhat below carrying capacity and seems to be stuck on 8 cock that i learnt of a nearby estate which in 2007 had 23 and now as 51. One aspect of Carrifran which does please me however is that it does keep the type of person who likes the thought of no tweeds, no sheep on the hills, gainfully employed in a remote valley which is cold and wet and i hope they all get pneumonia.

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