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

Restoring the landscape

Where montane scrub hangs on in a few high-altitude corries, or in areas of steep and broken ground, it is generally so sparse and restricted as to have no visual impact on the landscape. Improving its condition and extent will diversify the scenery, adding to its visual qualities and bringing a stronger sense of seasonality, as the deciduous species change colour from spring through to autumn.

Other than on nature reserves, large-scale restoration of montane scrub is likely to be viable only on the upper margins of existing forestry schemes, and here it could have an especially valuable role in the landscape.

In the last 50 years, several millennia of deforestation have been reversed in Scotland. The Forestry Commission estimated in 1998 that Scotland had some 1,109,000 hectares (4,280 square miles) of 'productive woodlands' and 93,000 hectares of other (mainly amenity) woodland. In the rush to establish a strategic timber crop after the Second World War, many early plantations were planted with little thought for the landscape. Today, however, the best plantations follow detailed landscape guidelines developed by the Forestry Commission to protect the scenery that is such a major Scottish asset.

Because grant-aid for forestry is derived for a system which originally had the sole aim of boosting wood production, even native woodland schemes tend to stop at or below the timberline. This inevitably results in a sharp cut-off at the upper margin of the forest, which can be mitigated only partly by landscaping. Just as the most magnificent curtains look inadequate without an elegant pelmet to set them off, so hill forests also need 'topping off'. That is a key role for montane scrub. It softens the hard and unnatural edges of plantations, and allows for a gentle gradation between the forest and the montane heath, both visually and ecologically.

Short term fencing is likely to be essential in most montane scrub restoration schemes to exclude grazing animals while the plants establish. Careful guidelines will be needed for the siting, design and construction of these fences. The aim should be to site them as unobtrusively as the terrain allows, without blocking recreational access. They should be removed as soon as the scrub is well established and browsing has been brought into balance.

Figure 2: A heavily grazed and uniform landscape (top) can be diversified by welldesigned forestry (middle), but the addition of a montane scrub zone (bottom) softens the visual impact of the forest and creates a more natural 'feel' to the landscape.