Montane Scrub

Natural Heritage Management

• Foreword
• Introduction
• What is montane scrub
• The loss of the ‘wee trees’
• Plants of the scrub
• Wildlife in the scrub
• Restoring the landscape
• The woods and the trees
• Shelter on the hill
• Game benefits
• Enjoying the hills
• Ecological values
• Action for scrub
• Bringing back the ‘wee trees’
• Further reading

Action for scrub

Montane scrub sometimes survives as just a few bushes clinging to a cliff ledge, beyond the reach of sheep or deer. As long as these plants are close enough for pollination, their seeds can be carried substantial distances by birds or the wind. The scrub, therefore, has some capacity for natural regeneration, provided other conditions are right. For example, in a few areas where plantation fences have impeded the movements of deer, open patches of scrub have begun to return to ungrazed areas above the fenceline.

However, the future for montane scrub is bleak without positive measures for its conservation. A major seminar held in 1996, as part of a Millennium Forest for Scotland project, stimulated interest in the ecology and restoration of montane scrub habitats in Scotland. Other initiatives are underway, including surveys of surviving scrub and a number of experimental grazing exclosures to encourage scrub regeneration.

Scottish Natural Heritage and the Montane Scrub Action Group are masterminding measures to encourage the restoration of montane scrub. There is great opportunity for other land holders and land managers to contribute towards this vision of restoring Scotland's hills to their former glory.

The Ben Lawers vision

By the 1980s, only two female plants of woolly willow survived in the Ben Lawers National Nature Reserve in Perthshire. They were 10 kilometres apart and at least as far from the nearest male of the species. Not surprisingly, they did not produce seeds. Other montane willows and juniper were also at critically low densities. In 1989 and 1990, two grazing exclosures were established on land owned by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS). Considerable natural regeneration has occurred within the exclosures, enhanced by planting out plants of the rarer species propagated from surviving specimens in the reserve. Although these plants are still young, parts of the exclosures are already acquiring a 'natural' scrub appearance.

In 1996, the NTS bought Meall nan Tarmachan, adjoining its Ben Lawers property to the west. Here it has even more ambitious plans to establish a 167-hectare exclosure within 5.5 kilometres of electric fence at Creag an Lochain. The NTS proposes to plant birch, downy willow and other species in the exclosure, although it may take another 50 years to realise the exciting vision of extensively restored montane willow scrub.