Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025 Quotes

“Before discussing the 'relinking' of people and forests through community forestry, it is important to understand where the 'delinking' paradigm, superimposed onto Tanzania and elsewhere during colonial times originated. The separation of people and nature has deep-rooted conceptual origins, for example early Judeo-Christian texts explicitly framed humans as exceptional and separate from nature as opposed to many animist religions that placed humans within nature. The conceptual separation is particularly strong in Europe, as reflected in the origins of certain words, with the Latin word foestis originating from a meaning 'outside', as in a wild place outside human control.

Such 'wild places' later became the hunting reserves of elites in Europe in the form of exclusionary Royal Forests, 'commoners' were kept out. A few centuries later, during the period of Enlightenment and into industrialisation and urbanisation, livelihoods in countries like Britain are further delinked from nature, The division between [eople and nature has become so heavily engrained in modern industrialised society that 'wilderness' has attained a romantic idealisation.”
― Peter O'Hara, Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025

“During the 20th century, the Forestry Commission (FC) bought land and planted it with commercial forestry crops on a massive scale. In most cases the land was bought from cash-strapped private land-owners who were required, prior to afforestation, to terminate or otherwise end farm tenancies. What is less well known about this period of forestry expansion is that following purchase the FC embarked on an active programme of property ruination, involving the abandonment and deliberate destruction of hundreds of vacated residential properties, mainly farmsteads. The ruins of these farmsteads are still visible in many forests currently managed by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) and act as a poignant symbol of Scotland's clearance legacy.”
― Douglas MacMillan, Reforesting Scotland 71, Spring/Summer 2025