Looking back at 2025, I spent a great deal of time reflecting on the dissatisfactory, and deteriorating, reality of land ownership in Scotland, and being particularly frustrated by the willingness of Scottish nature conservationists and outdoor folk to side step this issue.

On balance, it’s not that surprising. Scottish nature conservation seems to have been overtaken by a particularly naive approach built around de-peopling at large scale. The dysfunctional reality of land ownership in Scotland suits this just fine, and the backward-looking character of this approach (looking to restore what once was), has a natural appeal to the outdoor folk, the grass roots of nature conservation.

But what has become clear to me in 2025 is that great many, I dare say large majority, of Scottish conservationists and outdoor folk simply do not understand climate change; on the most basic level; the sheer, terrifying, eco-forming force of it. This is reflected in the harkening after the ecosystems that once were, the obsession with the ‘native species’ (which is a historical concept, not a biological one), and the drive for the reintroduction of certain species absent from the Scottish ecosystems for centuries.

This point was driven home to me loud and clear reading a piece in the February 2026 issue of the Trail magazine, in which the author writes back to us from a rosy 2126 where pines, beavers and lynx abound, not to mention salmon spawning in large numbers:

While we couldn’t stop global warming’s unnaturally fast advance, technology is at last giving us hope that things might be reversed. Maybe one day we’ll see ptarmigan, mountain hares and snow buntings back in our mountains.

While I understand (even though it is a February issue), it’s the season of good will and of messages of hope, this is so far detached from reality, that mind boggles. Indeed, it affirms my assertion elsewhere that rewilding is a quasi religious ideology that resists rational argument — this particular piece certainly reads like something from a magazine of a religious cult (and the illustration doesn’t help the perception). But, unfortunately, it is, I think, representative of where Scottish nature conservation stands today.

The reality is, however, that Scotland at +4C warming (and given we are talking about 2126 here, that is conservative), will look not only nothing like Scotland today, but even less so like the Scotland hundreds of years back.

For starters, there will no Scots pine forest. The Scots pine is a climate change migrant that came up here from the south of England on the back of climactic warming sometime between 5000-8000 years ago, and it will not be viable in Scotland in a relatively near future. The same goes for the other cool weather (aka native) tree species.

The contemporary preoccupation with ‘native’ species means there will be no forests or woodlands in Scotland in 2126. No forests means there will be no lynx, regardless how the present push for re-introduction, legal or illicit, goes.

Further more, large parts for Scotland in 2126 will subject to prolonged, if not perpetual drought; we are already seeing the early signs of that in areas like Fife and, shock and horror, northwest Highlands. Leaving aside the human consequences, persistent drought means there will be no beavers. Again, it doesn’t matter how many might get released in the next few years, the eco-forming nature of climate change trumps that of the beaver.

Continental Europe will in the coming years likely see some notable species migration along the temperature gradient lines, but this will not be the case on a significant scale in the UK for two simple reasons. Firstly, being a relatively small island with a fairly homogenous climate and ecosystem, the scope for such a migration is small to start with. Second, the severely depleted character of our ecosystem, particular the poor biodiversity, means the scope for effective future natural selection within the island confines is much reduced.

That is, for Scotland to have a viable moderately diverse ecosystem in 2126 would require a deliberate, country-wide, human intervention toward that happening already. We would have to abandon the naive native species focus and plan for the +4C future. I appreciate nobody wants to hear this, but from a century long perspective current projects based on past ecologies and species are already dead.

Matters are further complicated in the UK case by the fact that we will experience two dramatic climate change events in the near future: an eco-forming level of warming, likely +4C by the end of the century, followed by a subsequent cooling of around -10C when the AMOC collapses; the latter will likely happen in the lifetime of at least some of folk living in 2126. And both of these require advanced planning and action at present (the latter is hard to predict and could happen in our lifetimes).

But such an intervention will not happen.

Firstly, there would have to be considerable shift in the Scottish conservation mindset. But I can’t see that happening. If anything, 2025 was a year that has seen the hardening and radicalisation of stupid of all kind across the globe, and nature conservation is not exempt. I am now regularly hearing voices asserting that tree planting is bad, that we need to let ‘Nature’ do its own thing; this is ecologically so ignorant that there is no hope that any rational discussion could be had around it.

Secondly, coming back to the nature of land ownership in Scotland, our land is in the hands of a small number of large lairds (and in this regard it makes no difference whether they are individuals, corporations or NGOs), and so we have no say in what happens to it. These lairds can be broken into three basic groups: those who want to retain the current state of things (grouse moors, trophy hunting, etc), the rewilders (dreams of Scotland of very long ago, native species, natural regeneration, species reintroduction), and the City bankers (carbon credits, renewables).

There is some overlap between these groups, but in any case, none of them are doing what needs doing for +4C; there is no national interest in any of what happens on their land, just private agendas. We would be much better served by the land being parcelled out into small holdings, which would then allow for diversity of approaches. But such a change would require a critical national mass pushing for it to start with.

So, to the present reader: the simple truth is that without effective land reform that would wrench Scotland out of the hands of these private interests Scotland in 2126 will be a miserable place to live. It will be ecologically depleated and socially deprived to a level reminiscent of the Irish famines of the 18th and 19th centuries, for the fundamental question of climate change is not how many beavers there will be in Scotland in 2126, but where will the food come from. And if history teaches us anything, whatever resources Scotland will have left, will be redirected out of the country, because the nation doesn’t control its land.

To the Scots of 2126: I am sorry, I really am.