That's an ex-pine !

WHEN it comes to protecting the environment, dynamite is not one of the materials that comes to mind.

But yesterday RSPB Scotland began a unique approach to conservation by using explosives to blow up a number of trees in the ancient Abernethy forest.

The project, which involved blowing up the crowns of nine trees, is part of an attempt to increase the amount of large-volume dead wood in the forest.

When trees die, their function within the forest ecosystem is far from over, and they retain a crucial role in the health and productivity of the woodland.

In fact, in a natural forest ecosystem free from human interference, between 20 and 30 per cent of the trees will either be dead or dying.

But much of the ancient and semi-natural woodlands in Scotland have been highly modified over the millennia, through forest management and agricultural development, and this natural dynamic has been either lost or diminished.

The Abernethy forest, in the eastern Highlands, is one of the last remnants of the Caledonian pine forest that once covered the country and the largest remaining stretch of native pinewood in Britain, containing several million trees.

James Reynolds, spokesman for the RSPB, said: "We've been simply felling trees and trying to create dead wood habitats in that way before, but we don't think it allowed the process to get going quickly enough.

"This is the first time we've done this. It's the only way we can mimic nature's effect on trees, so that they are rent asunder, torn and shredded by an extreme event. So the trunk splinters and more of the heart wood is exposed. It allows more of the pathogens, microbes and bacteria which start the process of decay to get in there quicker."