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What we have lost

and what we still have to lose

By Remember the Goat

October 16^th, 2022

Looking at photographs of a walk I took through part of Glen Domhain earlier this year, I was struck by what we have lost. I walked across upland sheep deserts, into the river valley stripped of almost all it's native woodland and past the mono-culture of commercial forestry. As I left the the glen there was a sad reminder of all the homes and livelihoods Scotland has lost over many years.

Kenya, where I live now, is still in the process of losing its rich biodiversity. Most people I meet here don't seem to care too much about the loss of wilderness, for most the struggle to survive is far more urgent. Wildlife and wilderness are dangerous, something to be feared and fought.

It is sad to think that in the not too distant future, I might walk through the hills and plains in Kenya and meet as little wildlife as I did that day in Scotland.

There were few birds and the only animals I saw were sheep. We look at the Scottish landscape and revel in its beauty. We perceive it as wilderness, we see it as natural because we don't remember it any other way. Our life spans too short to realise that we are looking at a land crippled by human activities.

More obvious to us are the remains of homes and villages that scatter the highlands. People moved to make way for sheep, or forestry plantations, or simply forced to leave by economics. Which favoured them no more than the wilderness that was destroyed for to make room for something more profitable.