Excerpt from The Treeline by Ben Rawlence, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The pastoralist indigenous crofters, who farmed the Highlands till the clearances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, traditionally moved their cattle between the lowland forest and the moor. The clearances and the subsequent expansion of Victorian shooting estates for grouse and deer are often blamed for the deforestation of the Highlands, but while heather burning and overgrazing by deer in the absence of apex predators like wolves, lynx and bears did indeed prevent the trees from coming back, much of the open upland landscape had already been formed by clearing all the trees.

Excerpted from The Treeline by Ben Rawlence. Copyright © 2022 by Ben Rawlence. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.