Wild Land News no 68, Spring 2007

Book Review: Hostile Habitats, Scotland's mountain environments Article

Editors: Nick Kempe / Mark Wrightham, SMT 2006. ISBN: 0907521932. Price: £15

Never mind the daft title, this is the book I have been waiting 30-odd years for, puzzling as to why no-one could spot the market for a simple guide to what we see as we go about the mountains. Or might see if our eyes were opened. Until now, you would need a shelf of guides to span the geology, the climate, the natural history, the archaeology - some dull textbooks, others covering the whole of northern Europe. This brings it all together in the usual SMT hard covers, too heavy for a rucksack, but durable enough for a thousand thumbings through. Every bothy should have one, and the glossy paper won't kindle a fire.

I dipped first into the chapter I know least about - the humble invertebrates (which includes that class of politicians who would sell out our world-class if only sometimes-hostile habitats to imperial demands from furth of Scotland). Keith Miller alerts us to their uncounted numbers, from glamorous beasties I've yet to see like the Magpie Moth (widespread, locally common) to the itchy-crawling deer ked, a new one on me. But his figure of 'up to 2400 midge larvae per square metre' surely must be an underestimate.

A nice touch is to give the Gaelic names for the species (so why not for the rock-types and landforms ?). There are odd exceptions - didn't they notice the exotic Green Tiger Beetle or mountain azalea, let alone the omnipresent tufted hairgrass deschampsia cespitosa ? So many mountain placenames include these species - Meall Corranaich, the bracken corrie, of course - that it's strange I can't think of one featuring that landmark, the rowan (luis), or those yellow havens of tormentil (cara-mhil-a'-choin), or even the high-ranging pine marten (taghan) - perhaps unlike the otter (dobhran) it roams too wide to be placed.

These are all solid accounts by the best experts - yet happily they sometimes reveal their mountain-going roots, as when Mark Wrightham admits to the high proportion of fieldwork conducted from pub doorsteps (mapping the vegetation of Meall a' Chrulaiste from the Kingshouse), or to the value of heather and rowan to the struggling climber. It is good to have a single chapter on Vegetation Cover, by habitat types, rather than dividing it into trees, flowers, and the squidgy stuff; although the next edition should really go further beyond species recognition. It needs a chapter showing how the flora and fauna all inter-relate in living landscapes, and open up the debate on how we should manage and rewild them - or leave them to nature.

It will take a long time for even such a fine book as this to eradicate the folk myths we have imbibed. Amusingly, Nick Kempe goes too far the other way, knocking down the 'rock of ages' myth - "even our oldest rocks are less than half as old as the earth itself", and asserting that the landscape is actually all very recent - "almost all our mountain scenery is a legacy of the last Ice Age, or only 11,500 years old at most". Yet Kathryn Goodenough has just told us that Scotland's geology spans two-thirds of the lifetime of the earth, and John Gordon has stressed that the overall topography of the Scottish hills reflects the processes shaping the landscape prior to the Ice Age. Mercifully, Kathryn suggests the Highlands were once the height of the Alps - not the Himalayas, as that BBC1 programme bragged a couple of years ago.

Most guidebooks favour the charismatic mountains and species. This one gives equal space to the humble voles, to LBJs (little brown jobs) such as the meadow pipit, to rushes and mosses, and to unobtrusive landforms like solifluction lobes. Likewise, it depicts the Luss Hills and the Cluanie whalebacks, as well as the Cairngorms, Cuillins, and Torridons. It even notices the Southern Uplands.

And most guides stick to the good news, while this one points out the dire effects of sporting-interest persecutions, of blanket afforestation, and of alien animal introductions such as sika deer; not, oddly, alien plants such as rhododendron and the fast-spreading waterborne plague of Japanese knotweed (now taking hold along Loch Lubnaig, and even spotted filling a remote bay up Loch Etive).

And it illuminates the seldom-noticed traces of man - I had no idea Ben Griam Beag was so remarkably crowned with an ancient settlement.

The odd chapter out is Nick Kempe's pithy take on the Future of Our Mountains. He makes explicit the link between nature conservation and informal outdoor recreation - this book aims to bring its readers, us hillgoers, up to speed on just what makes Scotland's mountains so special. Maybe then we will start to lobby for their scenic protection and better management. He bravely swims against the PC tide by remarking on the way that most privately-owned estates have remained fairly immune to the vagaries of grant-aided follies like forestry and sheep overstocking, thus tending to preserve traditional ways. I fear this is changing, as cash incentives for wind generators reach bank-buster proportions, and wacky ideas such as wolf safari parks emerge. He quips that the dotterel, once rare, suddenly became common when Sweden joined the EU - the glum message being that progress is through a quagmire of quangos and committees, unless a charismatic leader cuts through it all by changing slogan - maybe from 'it's Scotland's oil' to 'it's Scotland's natural and cultural landscape inheritance and tourist-pound earner'. OK, could be snappier.

As for that daft title - which all my contacts fear will put off buyers - the gallery of brilliant pictures in glorious sunshine betrays it. Here is a verdant mountainscape burgeoning with wildlife. It only looks hostile if you're a deer (two bloody images, and the joy of being parasitized by 44 species of flatworms and roundworms). All the chapters depict a mountain environment rich in the essentials for life - water, soil, nutrients, warmth, shelter, diversity, ease of movement. The maritime climate is benign, compared with hot or cold deserts or continental interiors, and not even especially wet. Much of the terrain is pretty close to sea-level (below 300 metres), and the mountains are sliced through with low passes (no tunnels or alpine hairpins are needed to cross them in any direction). Only the eastern plateaux have any tiny claim to hostility on a global scale, and even there shielings are found up to 800 metres. Indeed Andy Dugmore and Ian Ralston's fascinating chapter on human traces brings home how widely colonised the Scottish uplands have been colonised, although more on recent decline and current resurgence would be welcome, as Scotland becomes an ever more attractive resort under the climate change squeeze.

There is just one picture of two twits up in the clag, when the rest of nature would be chilling out in its burrows, nests, woods, and pubs - and carapaced in breathable waterproof shells and equipped with bird-mimicking GPS it's not even hostile for them. This is what makes the Scottish mountains so enduringly attractive and special to countless hillgoers - they are a proper but encompassable range, they offer amazingly varied landscapes in a microcosm, and they teem with wildlife (130 invertebrate species found on the Cairngorm summit snows!). They give a frisson of hostility, but what this grand book really shows is that they are pussycats up against extreme habitats like Ellesmere Island or the Tibesti.

David Jarman