Finzean Estate - Golden Plover Award Winners

Finzean Estate receives the Golden Plover Award at Scone Palace.

The Heather Trust and GWCT Scotland have announced the winner of the second Golden Plover Award for moorland management. Lying in central Deeside, Finzean estate encompasses farmland, moorland and forestry. It is managed as an integrated family business with a keen interest in conservation and the preservation of a viable, thriving community. 

The Estate comprises 4,000 hectares, with moorland representing just over a third of this area. Game and wildlife management is undertaken to support a wide range of species, including black grouse, golden eagles, merlin, curlew and lapwing.  Red and roe deer are managed on both the open hill and in woodland.

Wildcats have been recorded at Finzean, and a real focus for conservation work has been the remnant population of capercaillie on the estate. Targeted management has seen the creation of mown woodland rides to regenerate blaeberry and other valuable foodplants beneath the forest canopy, and this is repaid by the birds which continue to thrive on the estate amidst dramatic national declines.

Until the 1980s, the moor produced bags of six hundred brace of Grouse a season, but then suffered a steep decline in fortunes. Since then, considerable effort has been put in to improve the upland habitat alongside other conservation initiatives. This has resulted in a steady recovery.

Balancing commitments to biodiversity across farmland, woodland and upland is a very complex and delicate task, and it is the key to all that the Golden Plover Award was intended to promote and support.

The final decision was extremely close, and Gannochy was announced as a runner-up for their commendable progress and hard work during the course of the past decade.

Finzean’s owner Andrew Farquharson and keeper Allan “Hedge” Shand were presented with the award by Heather Trust Chairman Malcolm Hay at a ceremony held at the Scottish Game Fair on the 4^th July. A specially commissioned print by wildlife artist Colin Woolf was also presented to the winners, and Andrew Farquharson dedicated the award to his father, who he described as the pioneer of the thriving community which now revolves around Finzean.