People often perceive forestry as growing forests for timber. In my research, I’d noticed that the big native woodland-creation projects rarely attract the media attention that plantations do. Yet these efforts offer more benefits to water quality and biodiversity than a forest of Sitka spruce might deliver. One cold March morning, James Hand, Operations Manager for Forestry and Land Scotland, picked me up from Stirling. We drove through the steady rain to visit Loch Katrine in The Great Trossachs Forest, the site of one of the earliest forest restoration projects in Scotland that had certified the carbon it would store.
The air felt soupy as we stepped out of the truck. We traipsed through old grazing fields to clusters of young trees. Their dark green colour contrasted with the muted grey sky. I stared at the native rowan and Scots pine, a species that also has a relatively high capacity to absorb carbon dioxide. I knew the experts involved had estimated how those trees would grow and how much carbon they might sequester in the years ahead. At some point, a company would likely claim that carbon as emissions removed from our atmosphere. A fast-growing plantation may suck up carbon faster and deliver much-needed timber, reducing the pressure to import from elsewhere. But a monoculture forest is also very different from what once was.
Most dictionary definitions of restoration centre on returning someone or something to a former condition. The effort to plant 2.5 million trees in the first 10 years of this 200-year project in The Great Trossachs was, indeed, returning trees to a land forested long ago. Creating a forest where one hasn’t stood in living memory, however, competes with perceptions of what the land and its uses should be. Even if I close my eyes and imagine a quintessential view of Scotland or England, I see rolling hills and open land, gnarled oak trees and grazing sheep. I understand how altering the current norm may also spark resistance.
Bringing back trees changes how people relate to the land and to each other. Yet we live in a world with about half as many trees as there were before civilisation arose. I admit that I want more – and not only for the carbon they sequester.
I want more trees for the shade they offer in this warming world. Trees cool the air around them. I want more trees for my children. They improve air quality. They calm our minds. Studies show correlations between tree cover around schools and academic performance. Trees help retain soil moisture and stabilise water tables. They can reduce the risk of drought and other extreme events. Studies have also revealed inverse relationships between the amount of tree cover and risk for cardiovascular disease, as well as depression. I want more trees for their great potential to make this planet more habitable into the future. But what we’re losing in the persistent degradation of relatively intact forests, in places like the Amazon or the Congo Basin, is different from the trees and forests we’re gaining.
I first heard the term ‘forest transition’ when I was in graduate school. It’s the shift from forest loss to gain – when deforestation disappears, and reforestation commences. I came across the work of Alexander Mather, a Scottish geographer, who spent his career studying what drives these historical green reversals. For thousands of years, Scotland had been mostly forested. By roughly 1600, only around 4% or 5% of land retained those ancient woodlands. It remained that way for a couple of hundred years. By the early 21st century, however, Scotland’s forested area had risen to about 17%. Yet only 4% of the total land area is native woodland today. Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and eastern US states provide other examples of forest transitions in the not-so-distant past.
New England, where I grew up, experienced an increase in forest cover in the 1800s. In some cases, as Mather described, people had abandoned less productive farmland. These forsaken farms reverted to forests. In other cases, people had noticed threats from deforestation and responded with conservation and reforestation policies. Fears of dependency on foreign timber during the first and second world wars, for example, motivated planting programmes. So began the ‘coniferisation’, where widespread planting of timber species could counteract the forest loss, or more accurately, the loss of tree cover – inviting the details of what comprises a ‘forest’ to change. I still want to hold on to the relatively intact forests that remain.
Forest comes from the Latin word foris, meaning ‘outside’. Forestis silvis literally means ‘wood outside’. There are over 800 definitions of forest in the scientific literature. None of them is poetic or spiritual in nature. They’re meant to make quantifying and tracking the world’s forests possible. Our perceptions of what a forest is, or could be, shape what we aim to protect and create. If ‘forest’ is simply a cluster of plants above some height, we lose sight of the many benefits that can come from recovering native ecosystems. Such a holistic endeavour to grow and sustain “more forest” offers greater benefits to biodiversity, human health and wellbeing than focusing on just one service that trees offer.
Some ecologists propose the word ‘renovation’ in lieu of restoration. Renovate: to impart new vigour. To remodel. To revive. To repair and improve something.
Sheep may no longer roam the banks of Loch Katrine, but the forest that those little trees become will support another community of life – from the soils below ground to the towns and cities where the water flows.
With the recent passing of the EU Nature Restoration Law, many people will contribute to a new kind of green reversal. Repairing Nature need not come at the expense of other land uses, but it does require a shift in mindset from thinking of forests as separate to integrating them into culture and community. Scientific studies show how introducing natural mixes of plants and trees on farms can enhance agricultural yields in many regions. Our farms need our forests, too. I see these burgeoning forests in many shapes and forms, a part of any collective vision for a more sustainable future.
