This essay investigates Walter Scott’s writing, across several genres, as a contribution to an environmental historiography of Scotland. One of the main research questions is whether that writing provides any evidence for an early land ethic that anticipates Aldo Leopold’s twentieth-century use of that term. Scott’s response to aesthetic discourses of his time is another topic of discussion. The essay explores ballads, poetry, fiction and a range of non-fiction documents that includes letters, a statement to parliament and minute books. Scott’s involvement in oil gas production is discussed, as is his concern about the depletion of river salmon stocks due to modern methods of fishing aimed at exploiting stocks to meet product demand from London. The essay is set in a framework of contextualized historical sources, as well as recent developments in ecocriticism and the environmental humanities.