If only more rich people had his vision.
Glenfeshie Estate in the western Cairngorms is a superb 172 square kilometres of steep-sided glen, high plateau and corrie, held at its heart a precious remnant of the once vast Caledonian Forest: ancient pines stretching along the floor of the main glen, where their ancestors had grown for some 8,000 years, since last ice gripped this land. But twenty years ago this was a dying remnant. Decades of overgrazing by red deer had ensured no regeneration of young trees (outside a few fenced areas) had occurred. Glenfeshie was in dire straits, a ravaged landscape. The large number of deer were also destroying juniper bushes, heather and other flowering plants, causing erosion and compacting soils, destroying habitats for other species, exacerbating flooding and minimising carbon sequestration.
To go to Glenfeshie now is to find hope: hope for a future where land is managed as if it mattered, as if it has meaning and value beyond the narrow confines of a shooting estate.
The public pressure for change ensured that Glenfeshie was rarely out of the news, usually for all the wrong reasons. But slowly, with the Forestry Commission advising, “where deer culling can be sustained at sufficient intensities and over wide enough areas, it is possible to establish native pinewoods without fencing” that pressure for change began to bear fruit.
Eventually, in 2006, with the purchase by its present owner, Anders Povlsen, a new future for Glenfeshie emerged, one based upon a vision of a much reduced deer population allowing the landscape to regain its full natural splendour as the vegetation slowly recovered from low ground to high tops. The changes over the last ten years have been dramatic. Glenfeshie is blooming: young trees, wild flowers and wildlife abound. The increased vegetation and more porous soils absorb more carbon from the atmosphere and slow the flow of flooding waters to the sea.
To go to Glenfeshie now is to find hope: hope for a future where land is managed as if it mattered, as if it has meaning and value beyond the narrow confines of a shooting estate, where landscape, wildlife, recreation, carbon sequestration and flood protection all flourish. As a result of reducing deer numbers, Glenfeshie is a land reborn.
Thank you, Anders.