From Darryl Mead
Glasgow
Natural deer populations are kept in control by predators, disease and
competition for food.
The critical short-term change to encourage forests to manage themselves must
be to reintroduce large native predators hunted to extinction in recent
centuries. In Scotland this means the wolf, brown bear and the wild boar.
Fires are a natural process which must be tolerated. They are made much more
devastating by the small size of many areas of potentially “natural”
woodland.
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A sustainable though cyclically variable level of dead-wood build-up and its
associated fire risk must be accepted. It is the same deadwood that provides the
habitat and food for many endangered species of insects and which keeps a
substantial portion of the ecosystem’s energy within the forest.
