Recent blogs

Our Activities

Visit from New Zealand

  Had a visit this month from a founding member of Strath Caulaidh.  Dr. Graeme Swanson emigrated to New Zealand almost 15 years ago and this was only the second time he has been back in Scotland since.  We toured around a few old haunts, and spent some time wandering in the hills.   Interesting to get his take on things, now he is not dealing day-to-day with deer management…
October 6, 2016
Working Week

Monitoring high altitude peat restoration

We re-visited our bare peat restoration trial at the end of September, and were really surprised to see how well the vegetation is now colonising.  Lots of germinated grass, along with a high cover of small mosses. For the first time, we have chosen to leave our large Gerlach Troughs out over winter to see if we catch more sediment – we gathered them in last autumn under the assumption…
October 3, 2016
Our Activities

Riverside regeneration of Scot’s pine

Happened to pass through the low ground of Mar Lodge Estate recently, for the first time in a good while, and was interested to see the spatial distribution of the Scot’s pine (Pinus sylvestris) regeneration present.  Some areas looking really dynamic and benefiting from a reduced density of Red deer (Cervus elaphus), whereas many parts still appear more or less devoid of new trees – and so, in my mind…
September 26, 2016
Facts & Figures

How many deer are there in Scotland?

We have just completed a report for the Scottish Government estimating how many woodland deer there are in Scotland.  A fascinating process, involving the linking together of a sequence of very complex population models for a range of forests spread across Scotland.   It’s involved developing some natty new techniques, which make best use of the available national data sets FC gathers from their deer larders, along with the deer…
July 4, 2016