Deadwood being created at one of Cairngorms National Park's most special nature reserves
People and machines have been working hard amongst the trees in the lower parts of Abernethy Forest and in parts of Craigmore to help improve habitat for biodiversity.
Winter is the main period of forest management for RSPB Scotland at the reserve.
The charity has been extracting timber from a plantation woodland that has been thinned at Mondhuie, and in Garten Wood and Craigmore small clearings have been created and young broadleaf trees protected with chestnut-paling fencing.
The RSPB is also restructuring some of the areas planted for timber production before Abernethy became a National Nature Reserve.
This means creating clearings, winching over mature trees to simulate natural wind-blow, ringbarking trees to create standing deadwood, and removing or ring-barking non-native trees such as Sitka spruce.
Charity bosses have said all this will help to make the old plantation areas in Abernethy look and function more like a natural forest and improve their nature-value for future decades.
Uwe Stoneman, senior site manager for RSPB’s Abernethy Reserve, said: “Our surveys show that compared to a natural pine forest, we have very little deadwood and a rather high density of trees, so all this work will help make the forest a much better place for wildlife.
“We are extracting some timber to sell, but there’s plenty that we can fell, winch, or ringbark and leave to die and decompose in the forest – important natural processes, which allow nutrients to be recycled and carbon to be absorbed in the soil.
“The vast majority of winching and ringbarking is done by local contractors, so a large chunk of the money we spend on this kind of management supports the local economy.
“The immediate results of this kind of work can look messy, but nature likes a mess, and the visual impact will soften over time, when a new generation of young regrowth starts to fill the gaps. In the meantime, the increase in deadwood provides much needed living space for all kinds of fungi, plants and animals which depend on it.”
Alban Thom, of Nethy Bridge based Alban Tree Care & Consultancy said: “We have been involved in woodland restructuring on Abernethy Reserve for 12 years now. Though the vast majority of the woodlands are composed of native species, many are actually man-made plantations, some merely 30 to 40 years old.
“So, although to the human eye they may look ‘natural’, they are far from favourable habitat to so many species. They are, in the main, a mono-culture of Scots Pine, not the mosaic of tree species and plants found in a natural woodland and of course they are all the same age.
“Our teams are made up of people who grew up and live in the valley and are passionate about the work and its goals.
“There is the economic benefit in that the work offers an income to many local folk but more importantly we look forward to seeing a more varied, diverse and living forest that will endure long after us.”
• The RSPB has said it is keen to answer any questions from the community on the work which has drawn some local criticism in the past – the reserve can be contacted at abernethy@rspb.org.uk .
