The bracken-clad hills are marked “Dundreggan forest” on the map but this Scottish glen is mostly stark Highland scenery: open, beautiful, and almost totally devoid of trees.
On a steep-sided little gully, 40 years ago, a few baby silver birches escaped relentless browsing by red deer and grew tall. Now, the nearby path through the bracken is dusted with thousands of brown specks: birch seeds.
“Each year, this ‘forest’ produces trillions of birch seed,” says Doug. “Until we reduce the deer pressure, not a single one has grown into a tree. Once we get the deer population right, this forest will absolutely take off. It’s starting to do that now.”
The charity purchased the Dundreggan hunting estate 11 years ago. Slowly – “at tree speed,” smiles Doug Gilbert, the operations manager for the charity Trees for Life at Dundreggan – it is rewilding 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres) of this degraded Highland landscape, restoring a diversity of native trees, scrub and associated life, from the dark bordered beauty moth to black grouse and, yes, red deer.