Birdcall breaks the morning silence as I potter past the stretching Scots pines and ancient oaks of Dundreggan, the rewilded estate of the charity Trees for Life in Glenmoriston in the Scottish Highlands. Woodpeckers drum and cuckoos call from on high, while around the trail, finches and thrushes flutter from tree to tree, avoiding beard lichens dripping off the branches.
I’m the first one out in the forest this morning (or the first human, at least), a feat easily achieved when you have spent the night here. The Dundreggan Rewilding Centre, the first of its kind in the world, opened in April and includes An Spiris, an L-shaped accommodation block with 20 double/twin rooms and a spacious communal area.
“Nature shouldn’t be exclusive,” Laurelin Cummins-Fraser, the director of the rewilding centre, told me over a brew the day before. “This is a gateway to the landscape.”
Dundreggan is Trees for Life’s 4,047-hectare (10,000-acre) example of “rewilding” in action. The tree nursery grows thousands of saplings for planting, from rare aspen to montane tree species, and the landscape has changed dramatically since it bought the estate in 2008, with nature flourishing and ecosystems restored. Back then it was (like much of the Highlands) heavily overgrazed by deer, the numbers of which are kept unnaturally high on many Scottish estates for sport shooting – a trend dating back to Victorian times.
After 15 years of rewilding at Dundreggan – and a reduction in deer numbers from about 16 a sq km to five (the ideal number for natural woodland regeneration is two to five in each sq km but in some parts of Scotland it exceeds 60) – there are now more than 4,000 species of plants and animals here, including rare globeflowers and red squirrels. Golden eagles even returned for the first time in 40 years in 2020 after an eyrie was built by the ecologist Roy Dennis – and chicks followed.
The back door of An Spiris opens on to the walking trails. I stroll along Ceum a Fhraoich (the Heather Path), learning from the informative signage how Scots pine supports Scottish crossbills, and wild boars – reintroduced here in 2009 – dig up soil, allowing new life to take root.
By the time I return from my walk, the rewilding centre has opened. It tells the story of a past where we lived alongside lynx, eagles and aurochs (extinct giant, wild cattle), among mountains green with trees and near rivers rich with salmon, where elk grazed in willow meadows birthed by beaver dams.
It also tells of a modern-day Highland landscape that, despite its beauty, has been severely degraded in the centuries since, not least because of the Highland Clearances in the 1700s and 1800s. Vast areas were transformed from places of Gaelic-speaking subsistence farming to sparsely populated areas used for large-scale sheep farming, disastrous for wildlife and people. By the 1950s, only fragments of the Caledonian pinewood forests remained, and today, Scotland ranks 212th (28th worst) out of 240 countries and territories in the Biodiversity Intactness Index.
“The Caledonian forest and the Gaelic culture and language both used to be widespread,” says Cummins-Fraser. “Now they only exist in remnants – but they can be brought back.” Accordingly, all signage around Dundreggan is printed in English and Gaelic.
As well as restoring fully functioning ecosystems – trees, plants and animals – in big enough numbers to fulfil their ecological role, rewilding is also a chance to bring back people. Last year, Trees for Life welcomed about 1,000 visitors to Dundreggan, mostly volunteers. Now the infrastructure is built, they’re hoping 30,000 will pop in for a coffee or tour in their first year. There will be storytelling events, and bushcraft, foraging and photography workshops, too.
The organisation has certainly expanded a lot since it was created by the ecologist Alan Watson Featherstone in 1986, with the aim of restoring the Caledonian forest in Glen Affric, one of Scotland’s most beautiful glens, about 15 miles north of Dundreggan. Almost 2m trees have been planted since, and Trees for Life’s work continues there too. Today, it’s at the geographical centre of the Affric Highlands, a bigger collaborative project with Rewilding Europe launched in 2021, with a 30-year vision to rewild a huge area stretching from Loch Ness, in the central Highlands, out to Kintail in the west.
Working with landowners and local people, the idea is that livelihoods will be boosted alongside nature regeneration – and “slow tourism” will play a part. The 44-mile Affric Kintail Way, which opened in 2015, already provides a waymarked route through the heart of the Affric Highlands, running from Drumnadrochit, on Loch Ness, to Morvich in Kintail.
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“The trail shows the diversity of the landscape,” says Stephanie Kiel, Affric Highlands team leader. “It takes you through a glen that is fairly agricultural, with livestock and forestry plantation, and then to the wilder areas of Glen Affric, with lots of trees. Then it takes you through a spectacular landscape with mostly short vegetation, where deer numbers are much higher.”
To see the restoration work in action, I walk the route over four days, starting on the forest trails near Drumnadrochit. It’s on day two, after climbing to a hidden viewpoint over Glen Affric, that the scenery bursts into life. Behind a mosaic woodland, Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin glimmers, with a backdrop of Munros. It’s the messiness of the rewilded forests that strikes me: the mix of sizes and shapes and species – old pines interspersed with little birch trees; the crooked oddities you don’t get in monoculture plantations.
The sun shines mercifully as I walk the 17 miles to Glen Affric youth hostel – one of the UK’s most remote hostels (the quickest route in is a three-hour walk) leaving Loch Beinn a’ Mheadhoin and joining Loch Affric, where a line of Scots pines snakes beneath An Tudair Beag and reflects a mirror image back on the water.
Golden sand beaches lead me to the River Affric, and as I round a bend, the 2-metre wingspan of a golden eagle cruises into sight. The hostel is idyllic; no internet or phone signal here, but there is a log fire. “You’re brought back to nature,” says Marc Phipps who runs it. “It’s like time stood still – in the most beautiful way.”
The final day takes me past towering mountains with bare slopes and round the powerful Allt Grannda waterfall. Deer watch from a ridgeline as I descend to the picturesque Glen Lichd. Then it’s a short stroll to Morvich.
I saw the theory of rewilding in Dundreggan, and the complexities of modern land use on the Affric-Kintail Way, from pasture and plantations to wet deserts and vibrant, regenerating forest.
“In 30 years I hope I’ll be tottering through a regenerating area,” says Kiel. “You’ll still have those beautiful views and mountains, but with more complex and diverse nature; more animals and birdsong, and more people in the landscape, enjoying all of that. That would be my vision.”
Accommodation was provided by An Spiris, where doubles start at £125 (two-night minimum stay), including breakfast in the rewilding centre and £10 towards an activity/tour, visitdundreggan.co.uk; and by Glen Affric youth hostel (£26 a bed a night), hostellingscotland.org.uk.