Caledonian Forest

The Caledonian Forest is the ancient (old-growth) temperate forest of Scotland. The forest today is a reduced-extent version of the pre-human-settlement forest, existing in several dozen remnant areas.

The Scots pines of the Caledonian Forest are directly descended from the first pines to arrive in Scotland following the Late Glacial; arriving about 7000 BCE. The forest reached its maximum extent about 5000 BC after which the Scottish climate became wetter and windier. This changed climate reduced the extent of the forest significantly by 2000 BC. From that date, human actions (including the grazing effects of sheep and deer) together with further climate shifts reduced it to its current extent. Exactly how far human activity should be blamed is difficult to determine (discussed below).

The forest exists as 35 remnants, as authenticated by Steven & Carlisle (1959) (or 84 remnants, including later subjective subdivisions of the 35) covering about 180 square kilometres (69 sq mi) or 18,000 hectares (44,000 acres). The Scots pines of these remnants are, by definition, directly descended from the first pines to arrive in Scotland following the ice age. These remnants have adapted genetically to different Scottish environments, and as such, are globally unique; their ecological characteristics form an unbroken, 9000-year chain of natural evolution with a distinct variety of soils, vegetation, and animals.

To a great extent the remnants survived on land that was either too steep, too rocky, or too remote to be agriculturally useful. The largest remnants are in Strathspey and Strath Dee on highly acidic, freely drained glacial deposits that are of little value for cultivation and domestic stock. An examination of the earliest maps of Scotland suggests that the extent of the Caledonian Forest remnants has changed little since 1600 AD.

The extent and nature of the ancient forest is much contested, as are the reasons for its decline. Authorities including Christopher Smout (of the Institute for Environmental History at St Andrews University) and Dr Alan Macdonald of Dundee University have pointed to the difficulty of defining a 'forest' and how that may be distinguished from an open landscape with varying degrees of light tree cover, and have argued that the idea of a continuous forest - sometimes called the Old Wood or the Great Wood of Caledon - covering much of Northern Scotland is 'myth'.

Much rhetoric has been introduced into the arguments regarding the destruction of the forest. Mabey claims that 'it was exploitation by the English that led to the destruction of the Old Wood of Caledon' and that this began in the 17th century, first to provide charcoal for iron foundries and then timber during the Napoleonic wars. But the evidence for this is poor. Extensive research (summarised by e.g. Tipping and Milburn) has shown that the decline of the forest had begun thousands of years earlier, and Smout, Macdonald and others have pointed out that Scottish landowners were entirely complicit in the felling for many and varied purposes (for example leather tanning using bark, and building works as Scotland's urban population grew), while as regards iron it would have been economic madness to invest heavily in iron production and then destroy the required fuel resource, and that this rarely happened.