How wild is Scotland?

By LFTO News Team

Outdoor headlines

02 February 2012 14:48

No, it's nothing to do with nights out in Glasgow, or Scottish independence. This question relates to the Scotland’s wildness and wild land, where it is and, indeed, if it is actually wild.

Scottish Natural Heritage has undertaken a massive project to define and map the wild areas of Scotland. Phase 1 has now been completed and has led to the creation of a map showing the relative levels of wildness for the whole of Scotland. But how have they done it?

"Wildness is a quality experienced by people when visiting places of a certain character" say SNH. "Measuring wildness is inherently difficult, as people respond differently according to their experience and their expectations of a place.  However, we consider wildness depends on a number of physical attributes that can be measured being present, and this is the basis of our approach"

The SNH's approach begins by assessing the level to which four physical attributes are present in the landscape:

          - the perceived naturalness of the land cover 
          - the remoteness from public roads or ferries 
          - the ruggedness of the terrain which is therefore challenging to cross 
          - the visible lack of buildings, roads, pylons and other modern artefacts

The results of these separate analyses were then combined to produce this map of relative wildness of Scotland:

Click image to enlarge or download

The mapped results of the four individual criteria can be seen below. Click on the images to enlarge or download them:

As mentioned above, this is Phase 1 of the project and Scottish Natural Heritage are inviting comments on the word undertaken, particularly with relevance to its methodology, the criteria applied and the results presented. They will consider this feedback in developing Phase II, which is intended to identify and define more precisely areas of wild land.

For more information or to provide feedback, click HERE or visit www.snh.gov.uk