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| Biodiversity in Scotland: The Way Forward |
| SCOTLAND'S BIODIVERSITY: OUR NATURAL INHERITANCE | |
| A BRIEF HISTORY | |
| Scotland's dramatic natural landscapes are
the product of both natural forces and human activities.
The indented coastline which breaks up to the north and
west into islands, the mountains, carved gullies and
boulder-strewn moors are legacies of a past ice age.
Sculpted and eroded by ice, water and wind, the land was
at first colonised by arctic wild life. Remnants from
this period still cling to existence in the high places
and colder neuks of Scotland. For a time as the climate warmed, an extensive mixed woodland of oak, birch, hazel, elm and Scots pine covered most of Scotland. For more than 6000 years, the Highlands and Islands were covered by 1.5 million hectares of wild wood. A shift towards cooler and wetter weather, coupled with increasing human activity from the Middle Ages meant that swathes of the ancient forest were cleared and did not regenerate. After centuries of clearing, only 1% of the original forest was left. Trees gave way to grass and heather moorland. Peat bogs formed when layers of dead vegetation failed to decompose in cold and waterlogged conditions. Heavy demands for timber during two world wars and the grazing of new growth by sheep and red deer threatened even these remaining patches of forest with extinction. In the latter half of this century, Scotland's patterns of land use changed again with much moorland, blanket bog and rough grassland being claimed for pasture, cereal crops and commercial forestry. Modern Scotland enjoys or endures a cool, wet, maritime climate. This gives us, especially along the west coast, the richest collections of mosses and liverworts anywhere in the world. Touching Shetland and sweeping down into the North Sea, the arctic waters bring northern marine species to our shores and influence the climate of the Highlands and Northern Isles. The combination of islands at a northern latitude with arctic influences means that Scotland has a diversity and total number of species which has much in common with Denmark, Norway and Sweden. More than half of Scotland's land area is mountainous, including the highest ranges in the British Isles. The high lands are home to mosses and lichens, to rare plants like the oblong woodsia fern and alpine sow-thistle, and to birds like the ptarmigan, dotterel and snow bunting. Along the west, the comparative warmth of the North Atlantic Drift brings southern marine species occasionally to our coasts, like the leatherback turtle, sun fish and trigger fish. |
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