Wild Land News no 64, Autumn 2005

One small gap for wild access Article

David Jarman reports on Ben Ledi - our first Annual Task

In WLN 63 we announced our first ever 'hands dirty' AGM - taking up Forestry Commission Scotland's challenge to do something about our Ben Ledi whinge (see WLN 63). On a near-perfect June Saturday your Steering Team plus local members from the Gordon and McCrae clans were ferried up to the forest edge in Stank Glen by FCS stalwart Jim Malcolm, with our primitive tools and his chainsaw.

We made remarkably short work of clearing a swathe through brash and waste timber up the nose of Creag Gobhlach, our Editor being sufficiently moved to extend the task to a viewpoint knoll (or was it just the opportunity for some caber-tossing ?). That left us a good half-day for attacking the rogue sitka that was beginning to adorn the skyline above Loch Lubnaig. Some strenuous hand-weeding and forking of several hundred escapees saw about a kilometre of the broad ridge towards Ardnandave Hill 'rewilded', although many remain on less accessible crags. And we survived to repair to Aberfoyle for the AGM, unscathed except for the Editor, whose rash venture into shorts as the day warmed up required him to be de-ticked.

If you want to sample our restored pathless circuit of Stank Glen, the access point is at 575106 - look for the excavated ramp up the forest road cutbank. Stuart Chalmers of FCS Aberfoyle tells us that the direct path shortcutting the forest road zig-zag will be reinstated in 20 years, when the young plantation blocking it is opened up. He also hopes to tackle the sitka invasion into the giant blockfall, and to see more routes up the east side of Ben Ledi opened up as felling progresses.

You might wonder why SWLG is devoting such energy to one of our least-remote hills. Ben Ledi is a handy and well-known demonstrator for three key principles which we are pressing in the current Review of the Scottish Forestry Strategy:

access to the mountains in afforested areas is not just a matter of made paths to gates in fences - there must be a choice of ways up onto the hill and even more importantly back down again, and some should be through more open ground, between islands of forest with permanent native woodland edges. We call this 'permeable forestry'.
alien conifers must not be allowed to spread beyond planned limits, or in time they will 'naturalise' and completely alter the character of vast areas - which may still be 'wild', but not as we know it.
there are some areas of long-established forest which would not be planted today, and from which commercial forestry should be withdrawn, either in favour of native woodland or as more open ground. This kind of rewilding could transform Stank Glen from an economically-marginal lobe of conifer to a joy for thousands.

More on this next time - with news of our current discussions with FCS under our membership of Scottish Environment LINK. Meanwhile, your thoughts on how Scotland's forests might evolve are welcome.