New mountain woodland to be created in Scottish Highlands

A charity has announced plans for a new woodland on Cairn Gorm, one of Scotland's best known mountains.

It would involve planting about 30,000 trees, including species like dwarf birch and montane willows.

The new forest would be high up the slope - around 600m (1,968ft) from the bottom of the mountain, which is 1,245m (4, 085ft) high.

Organisers say this would be the first habitat restoration scheme of its kind due to its large size.

Cairn Gorm is one of Scotland's best known mountains, where lots of people go to walk every year. It's also home to a ski resort.

Despite not being the highest peak in Scotland, it's lent its name to the whole surrounding mountain range, the Cairngorms.

The new woodland is to be planted along the banks of a small stream called Allt na Ciste.

This tree planting scheme is called Coire na Ciste Montane Woodland Project and has been led by the Spey Catchment Initiative (SCI), as well as funded by the Cairngorms National Park Authority.

These two groups said their plan was to restore an ecosystem to Scotland.

Forest habitats like this could once be found across Scotland.

It was part of what was called the Caledonian Forest which covered huge areas of Scotland after the end of the last ice age - about 11,000 years ago.

But as we moved to a cooler and wetter climate, the actions of humans led to the forest's size being massively reduced.

Scottish government agency NatureScot has said that by the 1900s, woodland could only be found on around 5% of Scotland's land area.