Reimagining Glen Prosen: flood mitigation and biodiversity boost

This 3500 ha estate was bought by the Scottish Government in 2022 - creating a contiguous area of 7500 ha of FLS land in the area – with the intent that it would be used to help demonstrate how the climate and biodiversity emergencies can be tackled at a landscape scale.

Indeed, flooding and the important role that upland land management will have to play in flood mitigation were to the forefront of my mind as I drove up into the Glen.

This was possibly not surprising, given that we have just had the wettest August on record across the west of Scotland, and we are just coming up the anniversary of the horrendous flooding down the east coast caused by Storm Babet last October.

Those who know me are aware that I am a strong advocate of the need for upland land managers to engage in the restoration of degraded peatlands on their farms, crofts or estates and to integrate more trees and woodlands into their land management systems.

The added advantage for FLS is that they have the potential to introduce such land use change at a truly landscape scale - rising to over 10,000 ha if they were also able to collaborate with public bodies such as Scottish Water and NatureScot, and larger still where neighbouring private estates are planting trees and restoring peat.

This could ultimately have a beneficial impact on reducing flooding in a range of vulnerable communities downstream from the Glen.

Of course, flood mitigation is only one of the wider benefits to society – what are known as public goods – that an estate the size of Glen Prosen could also be producing.

And so, any decisions on how - and importantly where best - to restructure existing woodlands and/or create new ones will also have to take into account what impacts this will also have on biodiversity and carbon storage across the glen.

Those biodiversity considerations will need to encompass not only what biodiversity value could be added to the Glen in the future but also what is there now. And the latter will be informed from the ecological surveys that FLS and others have been conducting on their behalf over the past two years.

In an ideal world, there would be scope for enhancing the wildlife interest in the Glen while maintaining what is already there.

For example, birds such as black grouse, lapwing and curlew are known to occur in varying numbers across the Glen. And given the Scotland-wide declines in all three of these species, then FLS is certainly currently interested in what could be done to maintain and enhance all of these going forward.

In reality though this may be difficult to achieve in practice, especially as the control of foxes has ceased in recent years. But it is also important to recognise that all three of these ground-nesting bird species differ in their habitat requirements.

It may therefore be that the greater diversity of habitats created by more planting and natural regeneration of native woodlands and scrub – at the scale ultimately needed to have a measurable impact on downstream flood mitigation – will still benefit black grouse.

And the targeted cattle grazing that FLS intend to introduce on the inbye wetland areas and out on the wider moorland may still help maintain breeding and feeding conditions for wading birds.

The benefit of creating a ‘living laboratory’ on such a scale as at Glen Prosen is that FLS has the potential - working with a wide range of scientists from across the scientific community - to test such different land management interventions to see what type of balance - and associated trade-offs - between different public goods may be feasible to achieve in practice.

The recent workshop was just the start of the process.

I look forward to continuing to discuss with FLS and others how Glen Prosen can be used to further open up the debate about how our uplands could or should be used in the future.