In 1989, a remarkable collaboration between the US National Park Service and the UK Countryside Commission brought together small teams of conservation professionals from both countries to study problems and opportunities in five regions of the United Kingdom. One of those teams developed a case study from the Ben Nevis area of Scotland, looking to safeguard and enhance outstanding environmental and recreation qualities while developing tourism and recreation opportunities.
Since the Victorian age, Scotland had developed summer tourism for the wealthier classes. Now, it was at the cusp of waves of more visitors of moderate income from both the UK and Europe, interested in hill walking, mountain biking, and other outdoor recreation. At the time, Scotland had set the boundaries of its first national park in the area around Loch Lomond and the Trossachs. Would Ben Nevis, Britain’s highest mountain, and its surrounding region of fresh and saltwater lochs and picturesque glens be worthy of a second national park designation? Could a ski area at Aonach Mor, in the shadow of Ben Nevis, attract new visitors to bolster the winter economy of Fort William?
In the thirty plus years since that visit by members of the US-UK Countryside Stewardship Exchange, the Highlands and Islands region of Scotland have continued to wrestle to balance economic benefits of tourism with protection of natural resources and local community values. The coastal region surrounding Acadia National Park in Maine, has grappled with similar issues.
In Scotland, long-standing issues serve as a backdrop for seeking a balance between tourism on the one hand and resource and community enhancement on the other. The first issue concerns the pattern of land ownership in areas outside of the country’s central belt, between Edinburgh and Glasgow, where the majority of the Scotland’s five million plus inhabitants reside.
After Scotland and England were brought together in the Act of Union in 1707, leaders of longstanding familial and territorial groupings called Clans were drawn into the circles of power around the monarchy, in London. Rewarded for loyalty by royal grants of land, these clan chiefs increasingly monetized ownership of land and clan members who tenanted that land. Rents were an important source of landowner wealth, and when rents proved not enough to support their lifestyles, sheep and shepherds were brought to their lands. The tenants were removed, either to small tenancies on marginal coastal land, called Crofts, or forced to emigrate to North America. Scotland’s “clearances” of people from the lands they had tenanted for centuries reached their peak during the 1750s to 1840s.
Queen Victoria made it fashionable to spend a portion of the summer in the highlands of Scotland, with lavish country homes becoming the popular for landowners made wealthy from profits of the burgeoning industrial revolution. Recreation included shooting both Grouse and Deer, and land was managed to yield wildlife crops to meet demand. Ownership of land continued to be consolidated for many reasons. A 2014 report by the Land Reform Review Group noted that in 1872, 90% of Scotland was owned by 1380 individuals and at the time of its publication, 50% of the land in Scotland was held by 432 individuals.
One of the striking visual characteristics of the highland landscape today is its openness, close cropped heather on the lower slopes of mountains, giving way to scree tops. Much of native woodlands had been cut in earlier eras, starting with the Iron Age demand for fuel and later industry requiring wood for ship building and other pursuits. Managing for Deer, who graze every green shoot, and Grouse, who thrive in the low vegetation of moorland, kept the woodland from growing back.
In fact, the climate and soil conditions in most of Scotland are ideal for growing trees. And after national policy following World War I sought greater self-sufficiency for UK timber resources for industrial use and papermaking, vast tracts of land were planted with non-native spruce, larch and fir. Subsequent rotational clear cutting and replanting, both on crown land and through subsidies to landowners brought economic benefits, but the resulting landscapes did not always favor recreational use and biodiversity.
Two responses to historic land ownership and management are significant: “community buy-outs”, in which residents of a village and surrounding land purchase the land and manage it for community benefit; and, very recently, efforts toward “re-wilding” are creating opportunities for native species and biodiversity to recover from centuries of management for deer stalking and grouse shooting or long decades of non-native forestry plantations.
The crofters of Assynt and the island community of Eigg provide examples of local campaigns to purchase adjoining land. In the first case, the land went up for sale when Swedish investors liquidated their holdings in 1993 and the Assynt Crofter’s Trust coordinated a variety of sources to produce the winning bid. On Eigg, community members long resenting lack of control of island resources formed Eigg Heritage Trust and teamed up the Highland Council and Scottish Wildlife Trust to secure the island in 1997. Those purchases have allowed for further investments for forestry, recreational fishing, heritage tourism, year-round resident housing and other pursuits that support both the economy and culture of their communities.
The current movement toward re-wilding stems from the recognition that biodiversity is a critical element in landscapes and communities adapting to climate change. While supported by many individuals on residential properties, significant landscape level examples stem from owners who are choosing to regenerate native species on vast holdings.
In 1993, Alan Watson Featherstone founded Trees for Life, with a vision to restore the Caledonia Forest across wide areas. He did this by growing birch, aspen and pine from locally harvested seed and transplanting them. Starting in Glen A “ric, on state land owned by the Forestry Commission and more recently on the Dundreggan Estate, near Loch Ness, Trees for Life is giving the Caledonian forest a chance to regenerate. In Glen Feshie, in the Cairngorm Mountains, Danish businessman Anders Povlsen has reduced the deer population to levels that the landscape can sustain. The resulting biodiversity is rebuilding soils, wildlife and ecosystem resilience, while planting of native trees may provide income through carbon sequestration schemes.
“With the twin crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss upon us, it’s no longer enough to regard ecosystem restoration as a side-line activity aimed at conserving small “reserves”, mainly as an entertaining draw for visitors. Landscape scale rewilding is of crucial importance to mitigate some of the impacts of climate change and to help create more resilient rural communities,” says Douglas Gilbert, Dundreggan Conservation Manager, at Trees for Life.
Gilbert also notes that small rural communities lack agency and capacity to tackle these issues. “Land ownership and decisions about land management is in the hands of a tiny proportion of the population. The continuing impact of high numbers of deer on carbon-rich uplands is a case in point. Without major change in deer management, restoration e “orts will be restricted and forest expansion, and carbon sequestration, will be much more di !cult,” says Gilbert.
While “rewilding” has become a major © Ronald Beard focus in the region, tourism has become dominant driver for the Highland economy and employment. As in every other locale attractive to visitors and investors there are attendant problems. Promotion of North Coast 500 (coincidentally Anders Povlsen is a director), referring to a road loop of that many miles from Fort William up through Northwest Scotland and around to Inverness, offers an example. The popularity of the route has resulted in bumper-to- bumper traffic on single-track roads, communities and lodging overwhelmed by the number of visitors seeking accommodations, replacement of home-owner beds and breakfasts by investor-owned Air B&Bs, and severe shortages of housing affordable to workers and their families.
There are parallels in Maine. About the same geographic size of Scotland, but with only about a fifth of the population, tourism, especially along its Atlantic coastline is often the most visible economic activity. After all, automobile plates tout the state as “Vacationland” and millions of East Coast visitors come each year, seeking clean air, access to nature and beauty of the landscape, as they have since the late 1800s. And with marketing that extends world-wide, visitors from other shores make their way in increasing numbers, by automobile, tour bus and cruise ships.
In Maine, as in Scotland, some trends have recognized where local communities need to disrupt market forces to benefit both year-round community members and visitors. Maine’s land historic ownership patterns meant that coastal areas were settled first, with individual farmers and fishermen purchasing land from speculators who had been granted large tracts during colonial times. Of course, Maine’s “clearances” were of Native Americans by English colonists in the 17th century, affected by introduced disease, armed conquest and devastating treaties.
So, anticipating that local communities would see more and more home and land purchase by visitors from away who would develop and privatize the coast, some visionaries began to experiment with local “land trusts” that could hold land or easements on land to protect the natural and cultural features of that land in perpetuity. Acadia National Park, on Mount Desert Island, resulted from gifts by such a land trust, the Hancock County Trustees for Public Reservation, established in 1908.
“Environmental degradation and pollution led to the first Earth Day in 1970, before there was an EPA or Clean Air and Water regulations. Maine Coast Heritage Trust was also founded that year to work voluntarily and respectfully with private landowners to conserve and protect the special features of the coast that would otherwise be degraded or lost over time,” notes Caroline Pryor, who served as the Trust’s vice president in the 1980s-90s (and was also a US-UK Exchange member in Cornwall).
“Intense development pressure across the state threatened not only scenic and natural lands but recreational, agricultural, and working forest lands,” continues Pryor. “Land was being subdivided, new roads with locked gates went in, and big houses sprouted up in formerly wild places.”
Changes in the landscape, combined with the success of voluntary land conservation techniques, led to rapid expansion of the land trust model in Maine and other states around the country.”
Local voters and residents recognized threats to locally valued scenic and habitat treasures and took steps to protect them, now with more than 80 land trusts protecting 12% of Maine’s land area. In 1987, the State of Maine issued its first $35 million bond to invest in “Land For Maine’s Future”, making grants to local groups and state agencies to help purchase land significant for its ecological, cultural, agricultural, forest, and/or recreational values.
Private investment by philanthropists has rounded out Maine’s response to land protection, with one prominent example being Gilbert Butler investing in park land along the Bold Coast of Washington County and in the highlands region of Maine near Baxter State Park. That park, including Mount Katahdin, the terminus of the Appalachian Trail, was a gift to the people of the state by Percival Baxter in 1931. And in 2016, lands accumulated by philanthropist Roxanne Quimby were donated, along with a $40M stewardship endowment ($20M then, $20M to raise) to form Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, part of the national park system.
What might Maine learn from Scotland, what might Scotland learn from Maine’s examples and what can international visitors to both these special landscapes and so many others both prized for their natural beauty and under threat from overuse?
It is evident that protecting natural areas and surrounding communities is most successful through the combined e “orts of land-owners, both large and small, and of partners in local, state and national government. These individuals and partners hold a common value of taking the long view. They seem to recognize the positive and negative trends from history and act now to bend policy and practice toward sustainability, towards the notion of building healthy ecosystems and communities today so that future generations will enjoy a good quality of life.
When we travel, we can take time to better understand the local responses to threats to environmental quality and community resilience. We can seek out and support the businesses and organizations who align with those values. And we can support the local voluntary e “orts and charitable work that is making a difference today and in the long term.
