Am Monadh Ruadh

The Cairngorms National Park is hugely diverse; it is a living, working landscape from the wild high mountains, to the heather moorlands and peatlands, to the magnificent forests, the farms and crofts, and the wetlands and rivers which wind through the flood plains.

The Caledonian Forest takes its name from the Romans who called Scotland ‘Caledonia’ meaning wooded heights and covered much of the Highlands and what we know as the Cairngorms National Park today. The Scots pine we see now are directly descended from these first pines, that arrived in Scotland following the Late Glacial period around 7,000 BCE and formed the westernmost outpost of the Boreal Forest in Europe.

It is estimated to have reached a maximum coverage of 1.5 million hectares around 5,000 BCE. Then as the climate became wetter and windier the forest reduced significantly by 2,000 BCE and from this time onwards human intervention reduced the forest to its current extent.

Today the Caledonian Forest exists in 35 remnants across the Highlands of Scotland, the only climatic region in the UK suitable to support it. These last remaining forests have had to adapt to the Scottish environment and as such are globally unique in their ecological characteristics and forms an unbroken 9,000 year chain of natural evolution.

Many species have flourished in the Caledonian Forest over the thousands of years. Prior to forest clearances in Neolithic times, you would have found beavers, wild boar, lynx, brown bears, grey wolves, elk and wild horses. These species are unfortunately extinct in the forests today, but are still home to some of the rarest wildlife in the UK; the mountain hare, pine marten, red deer, red fox, red squirrel, roe deer, Scottish wildcat, the capercaillie, crested tit and Scottish crossbill.

cairngorms.co.uk/discover-explore/landscapes-scenery/woodlands-forests