Dundreggan News - May 2009

 

Although winter is a quiet time in Nature, there’s been no let up at Dundreggan, as it’s been consistently busy over the past few months, with lots of activity taking place. I spent a couple of days out on the Estate in January, when the very cold weather resulted in the trees and bushes being coated with a thick layer of hoar frost, giving the whole area a real ‘winter wonderland’ appearance. Now, the new leaves of spring are appearing on the trees, and we’re moving forward with new developments in both planning and practical work on the land there. We’ve also been taking time to develop links with people in the surrounding area (two of whom are now volunteering regularly with us at Dundreggan), and we’ve had a couple of productive and positive meetings with members of the local community in recent months.

New Project Manager appointed

Steve Morris

I’m delighted to report that on March 30th Steve Morris took up the post of Project Manager at Dundreggan, where he has joined Allan Common in working full time on the Estate. Steve has moved up from Northumberland for this job, and has 13 years of experience in working for the Forestry Commission there. He comes with an excellent set of skills and abilities that will be invaluable for our work at Dundreggan in the years ahead, and we’re delighted to have him as the newest member of our staff team. Steve writes:

"I am thrilled to be joining Trees for Life as the new Project Manager at Dundreggan. It is an interesting and challenging opportunity for both myself and Trees for Life and I am looking forward to living and working in such a beautiful glen. The purchase of Dundreggan is a great step to furthering Trees for Life’s goals of natural woodland restoration and I hope, by working with volunteers and developing partnerships with neighbouring landowners and other stakeholders, to be instrumental in delivering the management objectives over the coming years."

Building and infrastructure work

The digger used for excavating trenches for laying the mains water pipes to the houses at Dundreggan.   Richard Brockbank and Mick Drury in the newly created office in the outbuilding behind the Lodge at Dundreggan.

A lot of the activity over the winter has been focussed on maintaining and improving the buildings and infrastructure on the Estate, which had been neglected by the previous owner in recent years. A key step was to connect the houses to the mains water supply, as the existing water source, from up the hill behind the houses, had been declared unsatisfactory by the local council. In fact, the mains water pipes already came to within 20 metres of one of the houses, but had never been connected up, so it was an apparently straightforward task to do so. With the aid of a rented digger, Allan Common and Richard Brockbank (who’s been at Dundreggan as a long-term volunteer since September) did most of the work themselves. However, as with many such projects, it took longer than expected, in this case because the hard frosts we experienced, in what was the coldest winter for many years, made digging impossible for a period of several weeks.

Allan and Richard have also completed the conversion of the outbuilding behind Dundreggan Lodge into an office for the Estate, providing an excellent work space for Steve and Allan and a good base for all our operations there. We’ve also begun work on the conversion of the Lodge itself, to make it more energy-efficient and to accommodate volunteer Work Week groups. A complete set of new radiators, donated as part of the One Planet Living Award we received from the DIY chain, B & Q, have been installed, and we’ve also put a wood-burning stove into the living room. By the time this edition of Caledonia Wild! is distributed, the solar panel hot water system, also donated by B & Q, should be installed. The main conversion work on the building will take place over the summer, hopefully being completed before our autumn programme of volunteer work weeks begin at Dundreggan.

Funding News

We’ve had an excellent response to our funding appeal for the Wild Boar Project at Dundreggan that we sent out in late November. To date we’ve received just over £12,000 towards our target of £15,500, and I’m very grateful to everyone who has given so generously – thank you! There’s still an opportunity to contribute to this appeal, and if you’d like to help us reach the total amount needed, please follow this link.

We’re also extremely grateful to the Audrey and JJ Martindale Foundation for their tremendous support, which has enabled us to purchase a number of capital items for Dundreggan, including a new 4 x 4 wheel drive minibus for the volunteer Work Week groups based there, a 4 x 4 crew cab pick-up truck and much of the building and infrastructure work we’re carrying out this year. With that significant funding on hand, we’ve been successful in attracting matching grants for work at Dundreggan from the Robertson Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, Linley Wightman Shaw Foundation and the Gannochy Trust, which will be of great support to us this year.

In terms of funding for practical work on the Estate, I’m delighted to report that we’ve received approval of a grant through the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP) to produce a Forest Plan for Dundreggan. This will enable us to produce a long-term strategy for the restoration of native forest to suitable parts of the Estate and a detailed work plan for the first 5 years. Another key element of the Forest Plan will be the development of a strategy to convert the 290 hectare conifer plantation in the southwest of Dundreggan back to native woodland.

We’ve also submitted applications to the SRDP for 5 small-scale projects that we aim to carry out on the Estate this year. These projects cover: enrichment planting of species such as oak, hazel, wych elm etc in the existing native birchwood; the wild boar project; a joint project with Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) for the riparian area by the River Moriston (see the article by FCS’s Kenneth Knott on page 7 of this edition of Caledonia Wild!); a 42 hectare exclosure for planting native trees in the northwest of the Estate; and a 8 hectare exclosure for dwarf birch regeneration. As Mick indicates in his article on page 5, the dwarf birch project will receive some funding through the Action for Mountain Woodland Project, and we’ve also received a grant for it from the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust.

More biodiversity surveys planned for 2009

We have another full schedule of specialist surveys planned for this year, to further document the diversity of species present on Dundreggan. These are designed to complement the surveys we’ve already had done, and this year we’ll be focussing on the following groups of organisms: mammals, reptiles and amphibians, birds, slugs and snails, spiders and Diptera (ie two-winged flies). We’ll also be having some follow up studies carried out on lichens, fungi and aquatic invertebrates, to expand on the surveys already done for those groups.

The surveys will be carried out from late April through the summer and into the early autumn, to maximise the opportunities for locating species during their main period of activity. Identifying the variety of plants, animals and insects etc. that are on Dundreggan is an essential step prior to beginning significant restoration work there, and will provide a baseline of data that can be used to guide our management of the estate. There’s a report about the beetle survey carried out on Dundreggan in 2007-08, and a full listing of the biological diversity recorded on the estate, on our web site.

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