If you are sitting on the summit of Skiddaw on a cold afternoon, huddling against the trig point and eating a slightly damp sandwich, you are probably looking out at a landscape that feels completely wild. It is vast, empty, and looks exactly as it has for generations.

But if you happen to be walking those ridges with an ecologist from the Cumbria Wildlife Trust, they will probably ruin your lunch. Because they will look at that same view and tell you that you are looking at a landscape that has been thoroughly, systematically shaved.

The fells we walk are beautiful, but they are also ecologically simplified. Centuries of intense sheep grazing, heather burning, and the relentless Cumbrian rain have worn the high ground down to its barest bones. It is neat, short, and uniform because anything that tries to grow gets eaten before it can establish itself.

While other groups are busy patching the stone paths or fighting planning developments in court, the Trust is looking at the actual biological health of the hills—trying to put some complexity back into the spaces between the rocks.

The Missing Tree Line

In a natural, healthy mountain system, trees do not just stop in a neat, abrupt line at the bottom of the valley. If left alone, a forest is supposed to crawl up the hillsides. It climbs up the steep ghylls, gradually thinning out, and turns into low, stunted, wind-twisted scrub before finally giving way to alpine grasses near the summits.

In Cumbria, this natural transition zone—the tree line—has been completely erased. The woods stop dead where the managed valley pastures end, leaving the high ground entirely naked. If a seedling tries to grow on the open fell where a sheep can reach it, it does not survive.

If you walk the steep eastern crags of Helvellyn, however, you might occasionally see a tiny, ragged scrap of green clinging to an inaccessible ledge. These are the last surviving remnants of that missing tree line: tiny, isolated patches of downy willow or alpine juniper.

These steep rock faces are also the only reason rare arctic-alpine plants like Alpine Saxifrage and Mountain Avens still exist in England. They are not there because they prefer the freezing, vertical crags; they are there because sheep cannot physically climb up to eat them. Just below, in the dark, cold depths of Red Tarn sitting under Striding Edge, lives the Schelly—a primitive, cold-water fish left stranded there when the glaciers retreated ten thousand years ago.

The Trust is currently trying to bring back this lost upland habitat on a massive scale at Skiddaw, taking on a 3,000-acre estate that includes the summit itself.

Skiddaw House, the remote, off-grid hostel, sits right in the middle of this area. The plan is to plant between 300,000 and 400,000 native trees along the steep ghylls to restore the missing high-altitude woodland.

Crucially for walkers, they are not using plastic tree guards or massive fences that block access. Routes like the Bob Graham Round will remain completely open. They are even taking leaf litter and soil from ancient woodlands like Ivy Crag Wood near Bassenthwaite to introduce the natural soil fungi that young trees need to survive Skiddaw's weather. If the woodland takes, it might eventually allow species like the pine marten to move back into the area.

The Peat Plumbing

Further down the slopes, on the flat, soggy cols and high plateaus, the Trust is dealing with peat.

Anyone who has dragged themselves across the boggy plateau between Bleaberry Fell and Armboth Fell, or tried to find a dry line across Mungrisdale Common, knows how miserable Cumbrian bogs can be. But these wet, black expanses are highly efficient carbon sinks.

The issue is that historically, many of these bogs were heavily ditched with drainage channels—known locally as "grips"—to dry the ground out for livestock. Combined with trampling from sheep and walkers, the rain has turned these old ditches into deep, eroding gullies. The peat dries, cracks, and washes down the ghylls every time it rains, turning the local streams brown.

The Trust's peatland team spends the wetter months blocking these drainage ditches with small dams made of peat, timber, or stone.

By slowing the water down, they turn the dry, black gullies back into shallow pools. This allows Sphagnum moss to return. Sphagnum is the key to a healthy bog; it acts like a giant sponge, holding up to twenty times its weight in water.

Stopping this black bleed is not just about saving your boots from a soaking; it is about drinking water. By keeping the high fells wet, the Trust stops millions of tonnes of organic matter from washing down into Thirlmere reservoir, which protects the drinking water for millions of people further south and keeps the valleys from flooding quite so quickly during heavy storms.

The High-Altitude Specialists

Rebuilding the habitat is ultimately about bringing back the species that are supposed to live here.

If you walk the high ridges in spring, you might still hear red grouse in the heather, see wheatears nesting in the dry stone walls, or spot a dotterel resting on the high plateau of Skiddaw or Helvellyn during its migration from Africa to the Arctic. Dotterels are famously tame; they will often sit quietly just a few feet from you while you rest. But these species are increasingly isolated.

A mountain stripped down to uniform, short grass offers very little shelter or food. By allowing the vegetation to grow back into a rougher, more natural state, the Trust is trying to support a wider range of upland specialists. This includes the Mountain Ringlet—England’s only true alpine butterfly, which relies on damp, high-altitude grasses—and predators like the merlin and peregrine falcon, which currently have to work much harder to hunt over bare slopes. You can also occasionally find adders basking on the lower, sunny slopes, and giant emperor moths in the heather.

Further east, around Shap and Bampton Common, England's oldest native herd of red deer still roams the fells. Restoring the scrub and native woodland along these valleys provides the cover and forage they need to survive the winter without damaging commercial forestry.

The Cultural Balance

None of this is about clearing the sheep off the fells or ignoring the history of the landscape.

The Lake District is a UNESCO World Heritage site specifically because of its farming heritage. You cannot separate the fells from Herdwick sheep, active commoners, and dry stone walls.

Because of this, the Trust works directly with local farmers and commoners to find a compromise. They also coordinate with major landowners like the National Trust, who manage the land around Helvellyn's headwalls, to ensure that ecological restoration works across property boundaries. The goal is to prove that the fells can support a viable farming economy and a functioning ecosystem, rather than forcing a choice between the two.

The next time you are out on a walk, look past the panoramic views and look at what is actually growing under your feet. If you see a ghyll that has been fenced to prevent grazing, or a peat hag packed with heather bales, you are walking through an ecosystem under repair.

The Trust isn't trying to make the hills easy, and they aren't trying to turn them into a wilderness museum. They are simply trying to make sure that the fells are a living, working landscape, rather than a sterile one that only looks good from a distance.

Fells Mentioned in This Guide

Organizations in This Guide

Learn About Other People Who Look After The Fells

The Bare Hills: Cumbria Wildlife Trust