Heather Beetle Season

Beetles at Langholm, August 2015

The heather beetle season is now well underway, and reports are coming into the Trust about beetle outbreaks across the British uplands. Worryingly, some of the excellent work carried out as part of the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project to restore beetle damage caused in 2009 and 2010 has been struck by beetles again, and large areas of Middlemoss where the road crosses from Langholm to Newcastleton have turned red. 

Beetle larvae were present in large numbers when the Trust visited a fortnight ago to visit the study areas at the South end of the moor, and the most likely theory is that the damage has simply been postponed by the late spring, rather than inhibited by it as was hoped.

Elsewhere, large outbreaks have occurred in the North Pennines near Croglin and further East towards Durham, and there are signs of more damage in the North York Moors, with worrying evidence that heather is possibly being damaged by an outbreak of phytophthora. If this is the case, it will be one of the first confirmed large-scale outbreaks of phythophthora in heather, and we are hoping to confirm or allay fears about this as soon as possible. 

The Trust is gathering as much information as possible about beetle damage this summer, so please don't hesitate to let us know if you see signs of heather that is red and does not flower - we can usually confirm the presence of beetle damage by examining photographs, but we are always available to carry out advisory site visits to offer bespoke consultancy on heather beetle issues. Contact us for more details, and if you do find beetle damage, please take the time to fill in a survey form from the Trust's website.

Golden Plover Award 2015

Golden Plover Award finalists 2015 at the Scottish Game Fair (pic: Rob MacDougall)

It was a busy weekend for the Heather Trust at the Scottish Game Fair, where the finalists for 2015's Golden Plover Award for Moorland Management attended a ceremony hosted by Savills to celebrate the work of this year's winner, Mar Estate.

Last winter, Mar Estate restored an area of 1.95ha of bare peat and 4,530m of eroded hags and gullies as part of a wider peatland restoration project undertaken by Dr. Jane Barker of Barker and Bland Ltd, peatland consultants and contractors based in Cumbria. The work was also greatly supported by Stephen Corcoran of the Cairngorms National Park Authority. 

When presenting the award, GWCT Scotland chairman Andrew Salvesen said: “The three finalists represented the amazing variety of moorland management across Scotland, from Aberdeenshire to Shetland.  “However Mar’s efforts have been outstanding.  The estate has successfully integrated game and deer management interests with conservation, commercial forestry and natural woodland regeneration and is a worthy winner of this year’s award.”

Estate owner Mark Nicolson was presented with a framed special edition print kindly donated by artist Colin Woolf at the 2015 Scottish Game Fair. The print is taken from a commissioned watercolour portrait of a golden plover.

The Golden Plover Award was founded in 2013 to celebrate and promote the very best of integrated upland management in Scotland, and this year’s applicants have been asked to demonstrate an engagement with peatland conservation. Savills have again played a key role in supporting the award, which has received praise and backing from a range of bodies and organisations involved in land management.

The judges carried out site visits and interviews with the land managers to identify this year’s winner.  Previous Golden Plover Award winners have been Edinglassie Estate (Donside) in 2013 and Finzean Estate (Deeside) in 2014.

For information about the Golden Plover Award in 2016, which will be presented at next year’s Scottish Game Fair, please email info@heathertrust.co.uk or visit the Golden Plover Award website at www.goldenploveraward.co.uk                            

Golden Plover Award 2015

Peatland restoration at Mar Estate impressed the judges

The Heather Trust & Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust (Scotland) announced last week that the winners of the 2015 Golden Plover Award for Moorland Management would go to Mar Estate after a difficult decision for the judges.

The 6,000 ha Mar Estate lies in the heart of Upper Deeside, integrating game and deer management interests with conservation, commercial forestry and natural woodland regeneration.

Between November 2014 and April 2015, the Estate has restored an area of 1.95 ha of bare peat and 4,530 m of eroded hags and gullies within a 164 ha block of moorland. This has involved re-profiling corroded hags and gullies with low impact machinery; spreading heather brash and reseeding bare peat areas form the final stage of the project. The project will prevent further erosion, improve water quality, develop the habitat for both grazing animals and ground nesting birds whilst enhancing the carbon sequestration ability of the moor.

Mar is also heavily involved in the conservation and monitoring of golden eagles and ground nesting birds. The Estate maintains extensive local community links and there is a community-led hydro scheme at an advanced stage.

Several designations exist on the Estate, including SSSI, National Scenic Area, SAC and National Nature Reserve, as well as the Cairngorms golden eagle SPA. Capercaillie continue to breed in the Knock Wood, as well as blackgame along the woodland edges. These important bird species and their leks are protected through predation control, the management of plant species and the use of soft net fences to reduce bird strike.

The estate's extensive forestry areas are managed with amenity and deer shelter in mind, along with the production of high quality timber. The judges were impressed with Mar's commitment to peatland conservation, particularly in terms of the estate's ability to integrate this priority into the estate's wider management.

Cunningsburgh apportionment on Shetland and Gordonbush Estate in Sutherland were both congratulated for their excellent work on peatland management, and all three finalists demonstrated the huge amount of work being put into this kind of management across Scotland.

Mar Estate will receive a print by renowned Scottish artist Colin Woolf at a ceremony sponsored by Savills at the Scottish Game Fair on the 3rd July 2015.

Find out more at www.goldenploveraward.co.uk -

Heather Beetles 2015

Heather beetles in Dorset last week (image: Charles Hartley)

The last few weeks have been warm enough to wake up hibernating heather beetles across the U.K., and the first reports have started to come in to us about the mass dispersal of adult beetles. Thousands were spotted on the wing in Brownsea Island and Studland in Dorset, and customers at the House of Bruar near Pitlochry reported beetles flying en masse towards the end of last week. 

Heather beetles hibernate deep in the undergrowth during the winter, and they emerge when the average daily temperature exceeds around 8°C. Heather beetles have well developed wings and muscles, but they tend to let the wind do most of the work when it comes to dispersal. Depending on the prevailing conditions on the day, they can travel over long distances in search of new breeding habitats. While there is no precise information relating to how far beetles can travel, it is likely that they can fly for a several miles if the wind is behind them. 

Once settled in their new habitats, beetles will mate and lay eggs. Most of the adults will die by the time that the eggs hatch in June or July, and the real heather damage is caused by the larvae towards the end of the summer.

The Heather Trust is leading the way on research into heather beetles in Britain, and our projects in the Peak District and at Langholm Moor aim to provide gamekeepers and land managers with practical, hands-on answers to help them manage the effects of heather beetle damage. We have run a survey of heather beetle damage for several years, and we are now looking for information about heather beetles in 2015.

If you notice adult heather beetles dispersing over the next few weeks, please let us know by sending us an email or getting in touch by phone. More information on recognising beetles is available on the Trust's beetle page. We will be circulating our heather beetle survey forms to gather information about damage caused over the summer as the year progresses, and the results from these surveys help us to piece together more information about the nature of beetle outbreaks. 

Survey returns are plotted on a map, and we have just received one of the last returns from 2014; a mixed year for heather beetle damage from Cornwall to Wester Ross.

The Galloway Fisheries Trust

A fine sea trout: peatland  conservation has far-reaching
knock-on effects for fisheries management in the uplands

Our work on peatland has been gathering momentum over the past few months, and peatland conservation is now the theme for 2015’s Golden Plover Award for Moorland Management. It was useful to see some of the peatland issues raised by the Galloway Fisheries Trust during their recent open meeting and at a subsequent get-together at their office in Newton Stewart, particularly in discovering how healthy peat impacts on water quality for the protection and conservation of wild fisheries.

In the second half of the Twentieth century, huge areas of Dumfries and Galloway were planted up with commercial forestry, and several important bogs, mosses and flows were drained to make way for trees. This has had a dramatic effect on the way water moves through the landscape, and research indicates that water levels are now more inclined to “spike” suddenly after heavy rainfall as run-off passes straight off the hills and down into the rivers. Migratory fish prefer a more gradual release of water from catchments in order to move up river, and this effect is often associated with peatland which can soak up rain and slowly release it into the river systems.

Drained, damaged peatland is more likely to be eroded by rainfall, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that water discolouration is increased where peat formation has been damaged. This leads to darker water which is more likely to warm up during the summer months, and temperatures sometimes rise high enough to kill salmon in considerable numbers. Increased amounts of sediment in the river water can also smother salmon redds and interfere with the fish’s breeding cycles. When the upper layers of a peatland are drained they become oxidised and this can increase the acidic run-off which lowers the pH in rivers below the level at which fish (and the invertebrates they feed upon) are able survive.

The Galloway Fisheries Trust is engaged with several projects designed to restore functioning peatland, since water quality is a crucial part of fisheries management. Much of this work involves “re-wetting”, clearing trees and destroying drainage systems imposed when the forest plantations were first established. The Kilquhockadale Flow in the upper Bladnoch covers nearly 14,000 hectares and was entirely drained and planted up with Sitka around the 1970’s.  Recent work by GFT on this Flow has been looking at where the deep peats are located and how forestry plans can be changed to restore these peatlands.  On the Moss of Cree near Newton Stewart,  work is being done to establish the best and most cost-effective means of restoring damaged peatland.

Everybody benefits when peatland is healthy and functional, and we will be keeping in touch with the Galloway Fisheries Trust to learn more about the impact of peatland conservation on water quality.