The Age of Nature

BIRDS SING Glen Affric. A beautiful land of ancient forest.

ALAN W. FEATHERSTONE

This is what most of Scotland would have looked like in the Highlands at least several thousand years ago. Now we've got less than 1 percent of this old forest left in scattered fragments, and Glen Affric is one of the best of those, it's the largest extent of least disturbed forest in the UK. So it's a very special place.

NARRATOR

Alan knows how important this ancient forest is to Scotland's native wildlife. He also knows how little there is left. And I thought somebody should do something about this. And for some time, I kept getting this feeling until eventually it dawned on me, Well, maybe 'the somebody' is me. Maybe I need to do something about this. In the early '90s, Alan set up a charity and began planting. He installed fences to keep out deer and sheep, to safeguard the young saplings.

ALAN W. FEATHERSTONE

So here inside the fence, there's been no grazing for 28 years now. So this is one of the first Scots Pines that I planted here in Glen Affric 28 years ago and at the time, this area was a desolate open, barren, treeless landscape, just like the peat hag outside here. And this tree has grown really well, it's now putting on over a foot of growth a year, it's really flourishing.

NARRATOR

Within Alan's enclosure, the whole ecosystem is regenerating. This is bog myrtle. It's an aromatic shrub, it's also highly palatable to deer so we don't find much of it outside the fence. It's important because it has bacteria in its roots that fix nitrogen from the air and it fertilises and improves the soil, it dries out the ground and it helps make way for the pioneer trees like the birch and rowans and willows to follow. So this is the process of ecological recovery, the process of natural succession which shows that this ecosystem is returning to health and balance again.