Natural returns at Knoydart

Our Digital Communications Officer Natalia Barbour charts a return to Knoydart that highlights how a landscape has recovered during its almost 40 years in the Trust’s care.

Nestled in a remote corner of Scotland’s west coast, the land we steward at Lì and Coire Dhorrcail on the Knoydart peninsula is a place of rugged beauty and ecological richness. It’s also a landscape that holds many stories of past settlement, livestock grazing and sport shooting.

Today, the fenced area on the lower slopes contrasts sharply with what was until relatively recently land overbrowsed by high numbers of deer. Beyond the fence, fragile remnants of montane woodland, clinging to spots that are inaccessible to deer, wait for the day when their own seeds can flourish without such protection.

Here, where the land and sea meet in dramatic fashion, there are nesting golden and sea eagles, pine martens, otters and more. On the boat crossing from Arnisdale, large pods of Atlantic white-sided dolphins are a regular sight.

While there is acknowledgement of the pony paths, hill dykes, sheilings and sheep fanks that all help explain past land uses, it is now a place where natural processes largely hold sway. Happily, the fencing used by the Trust to help boost woodland regeneration will soon be removed given the reduced browsing pressure.

Knoydart was the catalyst that brought the Trust’s four founding members together

Early Beginnings 

This wild place is also where the story of the Trust began. Knoydart was the catalyst that brought the Trust’s four founding members – Chris Brasher, Nick Luard, Denis Mollison and Nigel Hawkins – together in response to threats from the Ministry of Defence to purchase parts of the peninsula for military training.

Chris Brasher, an Olympic medallist, and Nick Luard, co-founder of Private Eye, had long been involved in efforts to save the area. Meanwhile, Denis and Nigel were developing a draft constitution for ‘Wild Land in Trust’. A series of chance encounters and a shared vision to protect and restore wild places led to their collaboration and the creation of the Trust in January 1983.

In the Trust’s 40th anniversary publication, Bob Aitken, our first membership secretary, recalled that it was “a small but committed band of lively and contrasting personalities engaged in a long wrangle with large external processes and multiple agencies and actors with distinctly different agendas and priorities”.

Original photograph taken in 1987 by Denis Mollison

Knoydart was the catalyst that brought the Trust’s four founding members together in response to threats from the Ministry of Defence to purchase parts of the peninsula.  At the time, Knoydart’s landscape bore the scars of centuries of overgrazing. Native tree cover had been severely reduced and the habitat was in poor condition.

Initially, the Trust used fencing to help on the Lì face to reverse this damage, with efforts made to reduce deer numbers elsewhere alongside the planting of native trees such as birch, oak, hazel, rowan and Scots pine.

Volunteers have long played a vital role in this transformation, planting and protecting trees and beating down bracken to prevent shading, while also clearing some of the non-native invasive species that are present.

All Changes

Trustees recently visited Knoydart to see the changes that have taken place since the Trust took ownership in 1989. They took with them a photograph taken in 1987 during one of the Trust’s first work parties at Lì and Coire Dhorrcail. Captured from a hillside overlooking the shore close to Eilean a’ Mhuineil, the image shows a very different scene from the current one – with bare slopes, stripped of native tree cover and wildlife pushed out.

“It’s actually quite hard to find the exact same spot now,” commented one of the visiting Trustees. “The growth has changed the view. Back then, the hillside was more open – you could see the shore clearly. This time, we had to push through undergrowth and growing trees to reach the same position.” Eventually, the location was found and a new photograph was taken.

In the updated image (above), bracken and lichens fill the foreground, while native trees stand tall, obscuring the view of the shore. In the distance, the slopes are beginning to fill with life once more.

These two photographs – taken nearly four decades apart – are more than just snapshots in time. They are visual markers of latent potential hidden within the land.

Frustrated by political, financial and practical challenges in deer control, the Trust’s first approach was to adopt fencing. Today, however, there is a willingness and ability to reduce deer numbers effectively – with efforts now continuing across all our properties.

In many ways, Knoydart reflects the Trust’s journey as well as the resilience of staff on the front line and of the land itself. It is the birthplace of the Trust and the testing ground for our guiding principles. The continued transformation of this landscape reminds us why giving primacy to natural processes matter – and what’s possible when we commit for the long term.

• This article first appeared in the Autumn / Winter 2025 edition of the John Muir Trust Members' Journal. If you would like to receive our Journal twice a year please consider joining the Trust as a Member.