Dundreggan News - November 2008

Small-scale practical forest restoration work has begun, along with necessary work on the three houses. We have some major items of expenditure to meet.

It's been a busy time since we took ownership of Dundreggan at the beginning of August, when as many people said, the 'real work' began, after we took over responsibility for the running of the estate. Allan Common, who has worked there for many years, officially became a Trees for Life employee when we took title to the estate, and he's a great addition to our staff team. He knows Dundreggan intimately and has a great love for the land there, and also does an excellent job of caring for the estate - he's been fully occupied in the early part of the autumn with the annual cull of red deer stags.

One of our first and most important priorities is to establish good relationships with the neighbours and the local community, and in late August I gave a short presentation about our plans for the estate to a well-attended meeting of the local community council. In October, Allan and I met with John Grant, the local crofter who has grazing rights to part of Dundreggan, and in late October we had an Open Day, for local people to come and visit the estate - the first of what we intend will be annual events.

Also in October, Jennie Martin, the founder and Executive Director of Wild Things, the environmental education charity that is an offshoot of Trees for Life, brought a group of 6 teenagers from Lossiemouth High School out to Dundreggan for a 2 day wilderness experience there. This was very successful, and as we're keen to provide an educational experience for children at Dundreggan, we look forward to working closely with Jennie and her colleagues at Wild Things in future.

Surveys and biodiversity discoveries

As Mark Richards reports in this edition of Caledonia Wild!, there's an extensive distribution of dwarf birch (Betula nana) in the northern part of Dundreggan - it forms one of the best concentrations of this montane scrub species in the country. During the course of his work, he observed ring ouzels (Turdus torquatus) there, which is interesting because that mountain-dwelling relative of the blackbird is thought to have an association with dwarf birch. It has also recently been added to the UK's Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) list, so that, together with the confirmation of the goat moth on Dundreggan, brings the total number of BAP species known on the estate to 40.

Liz Holden, who carried out a survey for fungi on Dundreggan in 2007, returned for a follow-up survey this year to look for the fungal species associated with dwarf birch. She spent a day on the estate in early August, but was unsuccessful in her search this time, although she did find a number of species of fungi in the birch woodland that she hadn't seen last year. As not all types of fungi fruit in abundance each year, it may be that 2008 wasn't a good year for the dwarf birch-associated species. Liz is planning to make another visit in 2009, so we hope that will be more successful.

Meanwhile, Jane Bowman is continuing to document and photograph the insect fauna on Dundreggan, and is building up a list of species for groups such as hoverflies and bees etc. I've been out with her regularly over the summer, and have drawn on her knowledge and familiarity with the estate to photograph various insects. One day in early August, the first time I was out on Dundreggan after we took ownership of the estate, we were looking at insects on some ragwort, and Jane went on ahead while I stopped to take some photographs. Some time later she came to tell me about another ragwort patch further ahead, where she had seen 14 peacock butterflies! When I arrived there, I was delighted to see these beautiful butterflies in such abundance, and it seemed particularly significant, as we had used the peacock as the symbol on our fundraising leaflet for Dundreggan. I had also seen them in early May 2006, on my first day there after we signed the legal agreement for the purchase of the estate. Once again, I felt as though the peacocks were welcoming me, and Trees for Life, in our new role as custodians of this remarkable area of land!

Pages about Biodiversity on Dundreggan on this site

Biodiversity surveys at Dundreggan - May 2010
Biodiversity discoveries - November 2009
Biodiversity surveys - August 2009
Surveys and biodiversity discoveries - November 2008
Reaping the results of our biodiversity surveys - May 2008
Dundreggan's diversity keeps growing! - November 2007
Biodiversity on Dundreggan - First impressions, August 2009
Biodiversity on Dundreggan

Richard Brockbank filling one of the compost bins he's made at Dundreggan with leaves, to produce leaf mould for future use as a mulch.   Colin Blyth (left) & Dan Puplett putting up a post in October, to mark the proposed boundary of the wild boar enclosure in the birchwood on Dundreggan.

Practical work is underway

We've begun practical work on Dundreggan on a small scale this autumn, with most of the Conservation Holidays based elsewhere in Glen Moriston doing a day's work on the estate. Their main task was felling some of the smaller non-native trees in the commercial plantation in the southwest of the estate. The restoration of the entire 290 hectare plantation back to native forest is a long term project that will probably take at least 10 years to complete, but it's great to make a start on it now. The volunteer groups have also done some seed collection this autumn, and we've got seed from hazel, oak, bird cherry, hawthorn, blackthorn and dog rose for propagation in our nursery at Plodda Lodge.

Meanwhile, in late September, long-term Findhorn community member and Trees for Life supporter Richard Brockbank began working at Dundreggan on a voluntary basis, potentially through the winter. He busied himself initially with maintenance and painting of Dundreggan Lodge and working in the garden around the Lodge, as both the building and the grounds had suffered from neglect latterly under the previous owner. As a keen gardener, Richard made some compost bins from old pallets, and, as a highly skilled woodworker and craftsman, he'll help with some of the conversion and renovation work needed on the Lodge - we're very grateful for his enthusiasm and good work.

In early October I spent a day with Colin Blyth and Dan Puplett marking out the provisional line for the proposed wild boar enclosure in the birch woodland on the lower slopes of Binnilidh Bheag. Much of that woodland area is almost impenetrable in summer because of the dense bracken growing there. We plan to utlise the boar to reduce the preponderance of the bracken, and also to provide better germination conditions for the seeds of trees such as Scots pine. We still have to apply for a licence to have boar at Dundreggan, so it will be next year before we can get the animals on site. However, we wanted to get the fence marked out before the bracken died down for the winter, so that we can situate the enclosure where the bracken is most in need of control. I also set up 3 photographic monitoring posts, so that we have documentary evidence of the condition of the bracken before the boar arrive, and can then evaluate how effective they are at clearing it.

Infrastructure work

I'm delighted to report that the planning application we submitted to Highland Council for a Change of Use for Dundreggan Lodge, to enable us to use the building as accommodation for Volunteer Conservation Holiday groups, has been approved. We're still awaiting approval of the Building Warrant that is also required - it covers the more stringent fire regulations and disabled access requirements we have to meet. There's quite a lot of work involved in that, which we'll have to complete before we can house Conservation Holiday groups there next spring, so we'll be putting a lot of time and energy into that in the coming months.

The most immediate task though is to connect the 3 houses at Dundreggan - the Lodge, Allan Common's house and Dundreggan Cottage - to the mains water supply. Up till now, all the buildings have been supplied from a private source just up the hill a little way behind them, but in an official water inspection in 2005 that supply was deemed unsatisfactory. No action was taken then, but another inspection this August came to the same conclusion, so we're treating it as a matter of high priority to ensure the water supply meets all the necessary standards. In fact, the mains supply comes to within 20 metres of Allan's house, but it was never connected up in the past, so it will be a relatively straightforward (albeit not cheap!) job to make the necessary connections now.

Funding news

In September we were disappointed to learn that our application to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) was unsuccessful. After an extensive and detailed evaluation by HLF staff, our application was recommended for approval, but the committee that decides on funding had substantially more applications than they had funds available for, so unfortunately ours was one they opted not to support. While this seemed like quite a blow at the time, we have refocused our fundraising and are now moving ahead with other options.

Colin Blyth has submitted an initial application on our behalf to the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP), which is the successor to the Woodland Grant Scheme, and we hope that will fund much of the practical forest restoration work on the estate.

I'm also delighted to report that we have been awarded £9,100 worth of materials and supplies by DIY chain B&Q, under their new 'One Planet Living Awards' programme. This includes insulation materials for Dundreggan Lodge, materials to convert the outbuilding behind the Lodge into an office, and a solar panel hot water system that will be installed on the roof of the Lodge.

In the absence of funding from HLF, we have some major items of expenditure that we need to raise funds for in the near future. These include a new minibus for Conservation Holidays based at Dundreggan (£23,000), a 4 x 4 crew cab pickup truck (£17,300), connecting the houses to mains water (£4,000), bringing Dundreggan Lodge up to Building Regulation standards (estimated at £40,000), the wild boar project (£25,500), biodiversity surveys (£16,900) and upgrading the deer larder (£25,000). If you're inspired to contribute to any of these, please contact the Trees for Life office!

Alan Watson Featherstone
 

Pages about Dundreggan on this site

• Dundreggan home page
• Become a Friend of Dundreggan
• The Dundreggan Estate - the perfect site for forest restoration. Management plan in brief.
• £1.65 million Dundreggan deal a milestone for Scotland's Caledonian Forest
• Our purchase of Dundreggan is complete, at last - August 2008
• Dundreggan News: articles from 2006 to the present
• First impressions of Dundreggan's potential for forest restoration
• Biodiversity on Dundreggan - First impressions, August 2006
• Biodiversity on Dundreggan
• The History of the Dundreggan Estate