Dundreggan News - April 2011
I have been afflicted by the traditional post Christmas requirement to plan things for the coming year. I suppose this is influenced both by the renewing of calendars, diaries and wall charts, and the lack of daylight hours resulting in more time being spent in the office. The office wall has a shiny new wall chart with a bewildering array of multi-coloured commitments already filled in. Planning is not an attribute that comes naturally to me, but I do benefit from seeing things scoped out, which then helps allocate resources to each project, with time often being the scarcest resource available.
Visitor facilities
Ongoing projects at Dundreggan include the Heritage Lottery-funded car park, interpretation and way-marked trails. The infrastructure work was largely completed last summer, but design issues delayed the completion of the interpretation panels and signal posts. The signal posts provide information about points of interest along the walks, as well as acting as way-markers. The panels and posts were delivered before Christmas and will be put in place in time for the official opening as part of our Biodiversity Day celebrations on May 22nd. We also intend constructing a wildlife-watching hide with an associated feeding station to attract pine martens (Martes martes) as part of this project.
Tree planting and other volunteer work in 2011
The planting of the new native woodland area in the northwest of the estate was completed in the autumn, with 24,000 Scots pines planted there by volunteers, in addition to the 35,000 broadleaved trees that went in earlier in 2010. That project was approved for funding by the SRDP (Scottish Rural Development Programme) but the saga rumbles on, as we’re still waiting for payment of the grant. Recently, I have been wrestling with an application to establish a further 75 hectares of native woodland north of the Allt iarairidh burn, adjacent to the Woodland Grant Scheme (WGS) area planted by the previous owner of the estate in 2002. The process was started in August last year and I am still jumping through bureaucratic hoops. The proposal includes 4.5 km of deer fencing, which I had hoped to complete in October, as fencing on this scale on the hill is obviously not a winter operation. I have a fencing contractor on standby, as well as a contractor to prepare the site for planting, and trees ordered from the nursery. I am still hopeful to receive notification of approval soon, which will allow a slightly reduced programme of planting to be carried out this spring, with the balance completed in the autumn. Further phases of planting will take place there in 2012 and 2013.
Other tasks planned for volunteers this year include: fertilising the trees that were planted in 2010 with rock phosphate, planting and protecting trees and natural regeneration in the existing woodland, brashing and ring barking non-native trees in the conifer plantation and bracken bashing in early and late summer. In order to complete this wide and extensive programme of work the tasks will be tackled by Conservation Holiday groups and local volunteers, supplemented by the new Green Days Out programme. We also have a busy schedule of ongoing building maintenance and repairs to carry out. To help plan, administer and deliver this work we will soon be appointing a project assistant at Dundreggan.
Management planning
Another area of planning where a lot of work has been concentrated in recent weeks is completing the Deer Management Plan. This has been a collaborative effort involving Alan Watson Featherstone, Allan Common and myself, with comments from a number of Trees for Life board members. We are also very grateful for input from Professor Rory Putman, a highly regarded deer biologist and author of The Deer Manager's Companion. Rory has first hand knowledge of the estate and the surrounding land, and talking through the issues with him, along with constructive advice on the plan presentation, has been invaluable. The plan itself is now complete and will go out for a period of consultation with neighbouring landowners, many of whom are members of the Glenmoriston Deer Management Group, which we are also part of. The plan identifies our objectives for deer management along with strategies to achieve these, which include culling, fencing, individual tree protection, diversionary feeding and disturbance of deer.
The overall Dundreggan Management Plan was drafted in 2008 to run for five years and we are now roughly half way through that period. With that in mind, Alan and I reviewed the plan in January. We concentrated on the implementation section near the end of the plan, which identified a series of actions, and by and large there has been significant progress in most areas. I did end up with a series of actions still to work on over the next 21/2 years, but I think it is fair to say that we are satisfied with the progress so far.
Steve Morris
Biodiversity News
As 2010, the International Year of Biodiversity, drew to a close, we were able to gain significant publicity for some of the biodiversity discoveries that have been made at Dundreggan. Thanks to the work of Richard Bunting, our PR consultant, we received excellent coverage in the press in November and December, focussing particularly on the rarer species that have been found on the estate, such as the strawberry spider (Araneus alsine) and a sawfly (Nematus pseudodispar) that had never been recorded in the UK before. That in turn has generated further media interest, and a film crew for BBC Television’s ‘The One Show’ programme is planning a visit to Dundreggan in July to film the strawberry spider.
 This unusual-looking fungus is the pouched false morel (Gyromitra infula), seen here on a birch log in the ancient birchwood on the northeast side of Binnilidh Mhor in October. |
Sawflies at Dundreggan
Of the various biodiversity surveys that were carried out on Dundreggan in 2010, it is the one for sawflies by Guy Knight, the Curator of Entomology at National Museums Liverpool, which has produced the most interesting results. In addition to the new-to-the-UK record mentioned above, he found several other species of particular note. One of those is a rare sawfly (Pristiphora borea) that has only been found three times in the UK before, and only once since 1931. It is an arctic-alpine species that occurs in association with dwarf birch (Betula nana), and Guy found it by sweep-netting dwarf birch plants inside the 10 hectare exclosure that we erected for dwarf birch regeneration for the previous owner of the estate in 2002. Given the widespread distribution and density of dwarf birch on the northern half of Dundreggan, this is very exciting, as there could be a significant population of this scarce species there.
Other sawflies of note that Guy found during his survey include one (Nematus fuscomaculatus) that is associated with aspen trees, for which there are apparently no records in the UK from the past 50 years. He also found a number of larvae of the juniper sawfly (Monoctenus juniperi) on the junipers in the native woodland on the estate. It is listed in the UK’s Red Data Book as an RDB3 species, meaning that it is Rare, and another sawfly (Pachynematus sulcatus) recorded during the survey is also RDB3-listed and has only been found three times before in the UK.
These discoveries highlight the fact that sawflies have been less-studied than some other groups of invertebrates, and relatively little work has been done on them in the Highlands. Based on the results of the 2010 survey, and particularly given the discovery of the sawfly associated with dwarf birch, we’ve now arranged for Guy to carry out a follow-up survey in 2011. We’re able to do this thanks to the generous financial support of the Audrey and JJ Martindale Foundation, who have provided a grant to cover the costs of a third successive year of biodiversity surveys at Dundreggan.
Other surveys and discoveries
Other surveys we have planned for 2011 include the second phase of the dragonfly survey that was begun in 2010, and surveys for aphids, woodlice and myriapods (the group of invertebrates that includes centipedes and millipedes). We’re also hoping that one of Guy’s colleagues, who visited Dundreggan with him last year, will return in 2011 to do a survey for slugs and snails.
Jane Bowman, local resident and near-neighbour of Dundreggan, spends more time exploring the estate than anyone and continues to make interesting discoveries there. She recently found a fungus (Atopospora betulina) growing on the leaves of dwarf birch, and there are apparently very few records of this species in Scotland, although three of those are from dwarf birch (the fungus also grows on the leaves of other birch trees).
Thank you
Our heartfelt thanks to the Audrey and JJ Martindale Foundation for their ongoing support for our project at Dundreggan – their grants contribute towards capital costs and general operating expenses for the estate, in addition to the biodiversity surveys. Thanks also to Jane Bowman for all the time and energy she puts into her biodiversity explorations (and for sharing her knowledge, enthusiasm and photos with our volunteer groups), and to our Conservation Holiday group focalisers, such as Russell Miller, Rob Pedley, Joan Fairhurst and Alison McGillivray, who contribute records of biodiversity sightings at Dundreggan and other sites where we work.
Alan Watson Featherstone
Pages about Biodiversity on Dundreggan on this site
New discoveries in charity's 'Lost world' Highland Estate - 20th January 2012
Biodiversity News - April 2011
Rare and endangered species found in Highlands estate's "lost world" - 17th December 2010
Rare sawfly discovered for first time in UK - 5th November 2010
Biodiversity surveys and discoveries - October 2010
Biodiversity surveys at Dundreggan - May 2010
Alder tongue fungus found at Dundreggan (and near Plodda Lodge) - 15 April 2010
Biodiversity surveys identify over 50 key species on Highland Estate - 15th February 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 2006
Biodiversity on Dundreggan
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