News....

SMG PRESS RELEASE: 22nd August 2005
Story appeared in the Scotsman, Herald, Independent and the Aberdeen Press & Journal.

Unique Forest Management utilising wild boar in the Glen Affric NNR

Is there a place in Britain where you can imagine that our magnificent predators of old, such as wolf, lynx and wild boar could yet roam? An ancient place, where the forest is dense and unspoilt. Well that place exists in the Scottish Highlands. That place is Glen Affric!!

Long a favourite with organisations keen to reintroduce some of our larger lost mammals, Glen Affric has the essential qualities of undisturbed native woodland, high mountainous ridges and above all solitude. A place where the noise of traffic, human voices and machinery fades easily and is soon lost, replaced only by the plaintive call of a buzzard or the wurr of a dragonfly on the wing .

Whilst the howl of the wolf or the cry of a lynx may never be heard again in these magnificent primeval woods, amazingly you can hear the low grunt of wild boar! A unique project has begun in which wild boar are now living and breeding within two large enclosures in part of the ancient Caledonian pine forest of Glen Affric. The project seeks to use the 'original ground disturbance force' (wild boar) to achieve two important forestry objectives, both of which would have been achieved naturally by the boars' ancestors in the ancient forests. These are to reduce the spread and dominance of bracken and to increase the number of tree seedlings to regenerate the forests. The boar so far have tackled the bracken with great enthusiasm! Rooting deep into the bracken and munching on the exposed tubers, they even eat young bracken shoots as they emerge in spring. The patches of well turned soil left behind from their rooting may well provide a fertile seed bed for the regeneration of native species such as pine, rowan and birch, and the project will monitor seedling establishment over the next 2-3 years.

The project is unique in using wild boar to manage a native pine wood and the 8 sows and the boar and young will have even more freedom to roam wild in the autumn when they move from half hectare test plots into 3-5 ha plots. The boar, from farmed stock, have settled in well to their life in the pinewood. Watching the small stripy boarlets running under their mothers and disappearing into tunnels in the heather, watching the sows gently rooting and hearing their soft low grunting which keeps the group together as they forage, takes you back to a time long gone, and stirs the imagination.

The project is managed locally and visitors are most welcome to see the boar, by arrangement....
Please contact the project co-ordinator - Liz Balharry on 01456 415450, or e-mail lizbalharry@btopenworld.com for more detailed information and to arrange a site visit.