Nature-led Conservation: Can Heritage Survive Without Nature?

At the top of Patrick Geddes’ valley section are the hills: the scene of only sparse and temporary human habitation: shepherds, walkers, windmills and dams, shooting ranges and drives, forest.

We often conceive of ‘nature’ as the opposite of ‘culture’ (be it urban or agriculture), but of course the hills, for all their apparent emptiness, are as tightly managed and as man-made as any city street. Nature is, in itself, a cultural construct. 

As such, it has heritage all of its own – histories of farming, walking, imagining, and centuries of care. This session will consider what happens when these forms of conservation meet one another, and speculates upon what might, and could, happen.

Currently the Director of Cultural Assets at Historic Environment Scotland, Dr David Mitchell has worked in the heritage sector for over 30 years in both the private and public sector. Originally training as an environmental scientist he is interested in seeing the historic environment through a different lens - one which is less fabric focused and instead sees a more holistic systems approach.

His talk will explore this topic and how myopic perspectives on cultural heritage invariably lead to myopic outcomes!

Diarmid Hearns is Head of Public Policy, Risk and Environment with the National Trust for Scotland. He leads on the Trust's engagement with developing public policy, including in the historic environment, cultural development, and nature restoration. 

Diarmid will discuss the many overlaps between nature conservation and conserving the historic environment, and how in recent years, nature conservation has moved to a more ambitious agenda of restoring nature wherever possible.