Enjoy the read
Stewart & Janet
RSPB & The Abernethy Forest Reserve – a short history
When John Kirk asked me to do a piece for The Nethy about the history of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, I was a little unsure about where to start - perhaps with those hardy souls in Didsbury way back in the 1880s protesting about the killing of great crested grebes for their superb head frill feathers to be used in the millinery trade? Then, as now, a rare bird was threatened with extinction in Britain. The Society was formed in 1889 to try and alert people to the problem and argue for legislation to safeguard the grebe, and its habitat, guided by sound conservation principles. Thanks to these early efforts there are now over 1000 great crested grebes in Britain and Ireland. In 1891, the embryonic Society amalgamated with the Fur and Feather group and the Society for the Protection of Birds was officially launched.
Or about the Society’s development? In 1901 the first “watcher” was appointed, to protect breeding pintails at Loch Leven in Fife and in 1904 the Society was incorporated by Royal Charter and became the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. In 1930 the Society bought its first nature reserve at Romney March, followed by Dungeness and East Wood our oldest extant reserves. George Waterston was appointed as the RSPB’s first Scottish representative in 1954, just in time for a pair of migrating ospreys to set up home at Loch Garten. Now there’s a story!
The arrival of a pair of ospreys at Loch Garten became national new
s. After breeding successfully in 1954 the birds didn’t return to the Loch Garten site until 1958, despite birds being seen in the general area in most of the intervening years. When “watchers” in the Strathspey area realised that the ospreys were back at the Loch Garten nest, George Waterston had to hurriedly arrange for a team of wardens to mount a twenty-four watch on the nest, working from caravans and a few tents pitched in the woodland on the south shore of Loch Garten. Disaster struck however, when the nest was robbed despite the eggs having been three-quarters of the way through their incubation period. The birds were quite resilient however, and returned to nest again in 1959 but to a new site to the east of Loch Garten. George was very bold and, working closely with Seafield Estates the landowners, decided to allow the public access to the site to watch the breeding birds and Operation Osprey, as it became known, was born. 12,000 people visited the temporary viewing hide in 1959 underlining the huge public interest that had been generated following the publicity of the nest being robbed in 1958. A very brave move by all concerned, considering that these were the only breeding ospreys in Britain in 1959, a year in which they reared three young.The partnership with Seafield Estates continued to work each summer right through to the Estate deciding to sell the land surrounding the osprey site along with Lochs Garten and Mallachie to the Society in November 1975. The Loch Garten Reserve was born and I was appointed as the first full-time Warden in time for the 1976 osprey season. The summer season “Osprey Camp” continued to operate under agreement with Miss Bella Macdonald at Inchdryne, tents being erected each summer to house the nine weekly volunteers with a few static caravans for the five wardening staff. The Boat Hotel and Nethybridge Hotel kindly provided bath and shower facilities for the osprey team until the early 1980s by when a small communal building with loos, kitchen and off duty area was built at Inchdryne.
Having a full-time staff member on site allowed time to look and record more
about the wider natural history interests of the reserve. Surveys were started to look at the breeding birds of the woodland, moorland, lochs and farmland, and the reserve signed up to record the annual numbers of butterflies on a fixed summer transect. A moth trap was operated and the different dragonflies were listed like the large red damselfly (right). All in all, the reserve seemed to be quite important for a number of species with caperercaillie, crested tits and Scottish crossbills heading the bird list, Kentish Glory and Cousin German the moth list and Northern Coenagrion and Northern Emerald the dragonfly list. With the help of John Owen from Epsom we started to look at the beetle population and when Peter Orton moved to Nethybridge in the early 1980s we spent a couple of weeks each September looking at fungi like fly agarics (left). I can’t thank these two men 
enough for the work they carried out over almost twenty years with over 900 beetles and 600 fungi recorded! In between times there was always a welcome chat and cup of tea (or something stronger) with Johnie Cullachie, Miss Mac, Jimuck Rymore and Mrs Smith.During the 1980s and 90s the reserve also expanded, with the purchases of Garten Wood, Tore Hill, Mondhuie and a part of the Cairngorm plateau adding to an expanding work-load. In Garten Wood some novel management was undertaken with heavy thinning of the commercial plantations to encourage a healthy blaeberry understorey, rich in caterpillars and other insects much loved by caper and the small bird populations. Forest bogs that had been drained and planted up with fast growing conifers were worked on with trees removed and drains blocked. For three years a MSC team helped with this work, getting professional forestry training and practical skills to help with finding long-term employment after their stint on the reserve. Thinning of the planted woodland on Tore Hill and Mondhuie was also undertaken, employing local contractors to do the work. In 1980 the old boatshed on the shore of Loch Garten was bought from the Strathspey Angling Association, dismantled, and re-erected as the main reserve workshop/garage at Grianan. In 1983, the Osprey Centre welcomed its millionth visitor and in 1986 the Society’s land agents were alerted to the possibility of the Forest Lodge Estate, owned by the Naylor family, being sold.
The information was correct and in 1988 the Society became the new owners of the Forest Lodge Estate, including the largest surviving remnant of the Great Wood of Caledon. An appeal to the RSPB’s membership raised £800,000 of the £1.8 million asking price in just over a month! The purchase effectively joined the Loch Garten and Cairngorm Plateau ownerships together, and the Abernethy Forest Reserve was born putting the Society into a different league regarding land management issues. Forest expansion became a major objective. The reserve currently supports 3500 hectares of mainly Scots pine woodland but there is the potential for an additional 3000 hectares. To meet the objective, deer control became a major part of the annual work programme, the annual cull being based on the reserve-wide counts carried out during the previous year. Capercaillie and black grouse monitoring was also undertaken, mainly by lek and brood counting, particularly as the national populations of both species had declined dramatically since the 1970s. With the decline of the capercaillie, the worlds largest grouse,
populations throughout Strathspey came under increasing pressure from visitors and birdwatchers wanting to see them. In 2000, Caper-watch was started at the Osprey Centre (left) in an effort to draw visitors away from searching the forests, in spring, early in the morning, allowing good views of lekking males and attendant females, but without disturbing the birds (http://www.greentourism.org.uk/caperwatch.html ). The two-thousand early morning visitors to caper-watch each spring also give a wee boost to the local economy.With the decline of the capercaillie, Abernethy joined with about 20 other Highland estates in a European funded project aimed at increasing the Scottish population (http://www.capercaillie-life.info/htm/the_project_general_background.php ) On most estates this work comprised removal or marking of forestry fences which the birds fly in to, targeted predator control and woodland management aimed at increasing the forest floor blaeberry vegetation. To date, the population nationally, has shown a healthy increase (http://www.gct.org.uk/text03.asp?PageId=336). Involvement in a second European funded project was also undertaken. Titled the ‘EU Wet Woods Restoration Project’ (http://www.wetwoods.org/). Its aim was to try and repair damage done to the forest bogs by drainage and planting, mainly in the 1960s and 70s. The main part of the Abernethy project was carried out in Mondhuie where over one hundred hectares of lodgepole pine and sitka spruce was removed and the drains dammed or blocked. Additional work was carried out in Garten Wood – adding to the work started in the 1980s – and in North Abernethy. The trees in Mondhuie were of such poor “form” they would probably never have been harvested if it hadn’t have been for this project.
In 1999 plans were drawn up for a permanent Osprey Visitor Centre and the building was completed in 2000 and named the ‘George Waterston Osprey Centre’. 2000 also saw the osprey team base move to the chalets at Mains of Garten, canvas and caravans replaced by buildings with all mod cons and the former “camp” area was r
estored to Inchdryne. Surveys in 2001 – 2002 showed that 800 hectares of naturally regenerating woodland had become established (right) and work is currently underway to assist tree establishment in areas where little has happened in the last twenty years. Forest Lodge has become the main “hub” for accommodation and office space for the 20 full and part-time staff employed on the reserve each year. Despite the ospreys EJ and Henry’s difficulties of 2007, 32,000 visitors came to see them, with over two-million visitors to date. Supported by the Scottish Forest Alliance, (http://www.scottishforestalliance.org.uk/default.aspa) a Field Teacher is employed to visit local schools to help with environmental projects and to lead school outings to the reserve. In 2001, a pair of ospreys built a nest and bred successfully at Bassenthwaite Lake in the English Lake District the first in England since 1840. Scottish birds trans-located to Rutland Water also bred in 2001.Abernethy Forest Reserve is currently one of the richest natural history sites in the UK with 3,600 species of plants and animals recorded, 700 of which are rare or scarce in Britain. We have a lot to thank the original ospreys for settling at Loch Garten and for George Waterston’s initiative in setting up such a brilliant conservation success story!
Stewart Taylor. Warden Loch Garten 1976 – 1990, Abernethy Senior Site Manager 1990 – 2002, Abernethy Technical assistant (part-time) to date.
A tranquil Loch Mallachie
All photos © Stewart Taylor
