Threave landscape learning resources

Transcript

One speaker: Dave Thompson, Head Ranger at Threave Nature Reserve

[Label: Downy birch, Betula pubescens]

Oh, the birch. They come into leaf early on. It's quite a quick coverage.
And if you look up into the canopy, you still can get some dappled light coming down.
I can tell them a mile off because of that absolutely stunning bark, especially when they're starting to mature.
You're getting that whiter, silvery look.
Birch seeds are minute, tiny.
The way that the seeds disperse is via wind and they can end up in the atmosphere and it could take years for them to make their way back down into a patch of ground somewhere.
For example, on a clear fell it's one of the first trees that you'll see coming up and it grows really rapidly as well.
But it does allow more light to penetrate.
Even if it's really closely planted together, you'll still get that understorey of other, different plants.
It's a lovely space to be in, among birch -- visually and mentally.
It's just the atmosphere and the colour, the sound of the leaves, etc.

[Label: Sessile oak, Quercus petraea]

Oak is a later tree to come into leaf.
In winter the bud is really quite easy to identify because it's a clustered type of bud, so there's quite a few buds on one twig.
Usually you'll see beech and birch, sycamore ... and then later on you'll get the oak.
It takes a lot longer to come into full leaf.
If you were going to have a favourite tree, I think it'd have to be most likely oak!
It's got so many uses, not only for people but for the planet.
It can sustain, I would say, thousands of different life forms, from insects down to plant.
There's usually something going on in an oak tree for sure.
Even after they die, an oak tree can be in the landscape for decades.
In the spring when their leaves are young and supple, it is a softer sound.
But later in the year, when they're crispy and coming into the autumn, when they're full of leaves, they do become louder.
They have this massive whoosh that carries across the landscape for a long way.

[Label: Ash, Fraxinus excelsior]

Ash: it definitely has more of an open feel to it, or look to it.
It has a really distinctive black bud, which is easy to identify.
But also the bark on a mature tree -- very fissured and it has that criss-cross type of pattern that goes right up the trunk.
Ash tree comes into leaf later on, about the same time as oak or even just before.
The leaf shape, you can tell because it's like a compound shape leaf. It's one long leaf with loads of little leaflets on the side.
And not forgetting the ash keys; can't forget them,
And you can see why they call them ash keys as well.
In the winter, when the wind's blowing and the ash keys have died back a little bit and dried up, they do make a jingly sound like a bunch of keys, and they look like a bunch of keys as well.
In the blink of an eye, the leaves are gone in the autumn.
Unfortunately I've seen so many now that are fade in away and dying of ash dieback.
The spores of the fungus are carried on the wind and it spreads very rapidly.
You can see it starting in a tree, where the very tips of the tree start to die back and it just sort of spreads through the whole of the tree.
They're still there and we can retain them -- in some places.
They have a value for the environment and for wildlife even when they're dead.

Over on Port Hill there used to be a plot of commercial forestry.
We decided that as part of this project we would take them out and then allow that smaller area to naturally regenerate.
We left a lot of the dead wood for habitat, and that's going to rot away and go back into the land.
But also it's great for for invertebrates; it's great for fungus, etc.
It was almost instantaneously. I mean, they were felled in April and straightaway we had two species of miner bee that moved in straightaway.
And then another pioneer type of plant emerged after that, which was the foxglove.
And that just literally carpeted the whole of that banking.
Those seeds must have been there for a long long time, well over 30 years I would say.

Following on from some of the restoration work that we did on the burn, we've put in a mix but mainly aspen.
Mainly aspen has gone in there, so there is some rowan and alder.
What the trees are going to do is help by shading the area, in time adding dead wood, making it a much more diverse habitat.
And hopefully get fish going back up there and spawning because it's not suitable to them at the minute.

Trees and woodland are important in tackling climate change.
Over a long period of time -- and that's from planting to maturity -- they are an important factor in carbon storage.
As the trees grow, they take in the carbon dioxide from the air, through the leaves into the tree itself and into the roots.
But what's not so obvious to us is that it stores more than three quarters of the carbon dioxide in the soil.

I love my trees. My career was trees, forestry but I've still tons to learn.
I'm just at the beginning of my training knowledge.

[Filmed and recorded at National Trust for Scotland Threave Nature Reserve
Narrated by David Thompson, Head Ranger at Threave
Executive Producer for NTS: Gareth Clingan
Executive Producer for Galloway Glens: McNabb Laurie
Project Manager for NTS: David Thompson
Producer for Galloway Glens: Dr Jan Hogarth
Production Assistant: Betty Stephenson
Funded and Supported by: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Dumfries & Galloway Council
Film commissioned as part of Threave One Hundred Year Landscape Restoration Project
Filmed and produced by John Wallace, 2023]

Transcript

One speaker: Huw Connick

Today we're at the National Trust for Scotland's Threave Estate in Castle Douglas in one of the grazing fields.
This field is part of the make-up of the traditional farm.
We are trying to build back more diversity in this landscape,
To do that, we are planning where these cattle are going to be grazing, how long they're going to be grazing, how long the land recovers for.
A very key part to restoring landscapes and using cattle is rest and recovery.
If cattle are on land for too long, they will start depleting the landscape.
So what I've been doing today is, within this paddock, actually taking a little 10 by 10 or 12 metre plots, looking at the species of grass within that and thinking to myself would that be enough to feed one cow for one day without overgrazing and damaging the land?
And once I'm comfortable with saying that that plot is enough, then it's simple maths -- you multiply that plot by the number of cows that you've got and then you can work out how much your cows are going to graze in one day in one acre or one hectare.
We call it ADH, which is animal days per hectare.
So, you can work out if you've got 10 animals in a hectare, how many days can they graze that for without damaging that land.

The cows that we're using, the Galloways, they've got collars on their necks and they are linked to an app on your phone, which is transmitted via GPS.
That effectively replicates having a hard-line electric fence in your paddock.
The cows go near that, they get a shock and then they come back.
With the system that we're using, the cows hear little sounds coming off the collars that tells them when they're getting closer to their virtual boundary that we set in the app.
The noises get louder and louder and louder, and closer and closer, to which point when they step onto that virtual boundary they get a little electric pulse, just like you would from a normal electric fence -- probably a bit less actually.
The key thing is that they learn to associate that pulse with the noises, so in the future the noises is what they listen to and that teaches them to back away from that boundary.

The cattle, they do what cattle do.
They eat, they poo, they wee -- and that helps regenerate land.
It helps put organic matter back into the soil which then builds up more things like worms and gives you better healthier soil.
That's all important stuff that they do to make healthy grassland or pasture or ecosystems.
Different farming systems farm in different ways, but some systems they rely on having two or three cuts of what we call silage off their field.
In the summer months, when nature is at its busiest and there's lots of things happening, these fields are having to be cut several times.
That leads to lots of different species suffering as a result of that.
But that's maybe how they have to farm because they need silage for all their cows.

What we found here, just by coincidence really, is a hare form.
It's quite a well-pronounced little indent on the ground where the hare's just nestled in and bent back a little bit of earth.
We know there's hares in this pasture.
Again, part of our holistic land management approach is actually taking into consideration ecology, flora and fauna.
Knowing this information, that these fields are favoured for hares, we can then maybe change our management or look at whether we graze or cut.
Cutting for silage or hay too early on potentially could have an implication, getting young hares caught up, leverets caught in the machinery.
So again, it's just really nice to see these things so we'll just push these back a little bit.
I suspect it won't come back to that after me fiddling around, but we'll put it back as it was.

In modern silage fields, quite often it is favourable to have two or three different grass species. That's purposely done because these grasses grow incredibly well and they do what's been asked of them.
They grow quickly; they provide feed for cattle for the winter.
Here, we are trying to increase grass species, more what they call forbs and herbs.
Lots of different biodiversity that supports lots of different life.
The idea is that you can always come into a field like this and you'd be walking through grasses and flowers up to your knees.
If you think back to fun days of running through a meadow or hiding in it or seeing the grass blowing in the breeze, that's what we're trying to recreate here.
Something that looks fun, looks a nice place to be; doesn't look like a very very short field that looks pretty boring.
It looks like, if you're an animal or a hare or a deer, you'd think, do you know what? I'd have amazing fun running around in that -- it's going to be brilliant!
It brings joy and fun; you want to jump in that field, you want to play, you want to roll around it, you want to hide.
And I think if you see that in the field, I think it's a pretty special thing.

[Filmed and recorded at National Trust for Scotland Threave Nature Reserve
Narrated by Huw Connick
Executive Producer for NTS: Gareth Clingan
Executive Producer for Galloway Glens: McNabb Laurie
Project Manager for NTS: David Thompson
Producer for Galloway Glens: Dr Jan Hogarth
Production Assistant: Betty Stephenson
Funded and Supported by: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Dumfries & Galloway Council
Film commissioned as part of Threave One Hundred Year Landscape Restoration Project
Filmed and produced by John Wallace, 2023]

Transcript

Four speakers: Grace Prouse, Jamie Ribbens, Kacie Jess and Phil Dowling

Grace
Hi, my name is Grace Prouse and today I'm part of a team from Cbec Eco-engineering and we're doing a topographic and bathymetric survey, which sounds a bit fancy.
The bathymetric part refers to a survey of the actual river channel, and topographic is usually at any ground levels.
So we're collecting elevation data of the river banks and the bed of the river, so that then it can be created into a 3D model.
Our colleague Eric, he'll be modelling using different flows running through that 3D surface that we've built.
We've been using a GPS to enable us to be able to collect those bits of data.
We're also collecting some data on the embankments where, for this restoration project that they're working on to improve the wetland, they're going to be taking down sections of the embankments to allow the water to flow through this wetland area and back out into the Dee again.
At the moment you can see that the land around here does flood, but because of these embankments on this side of the River Dee, it means that some of the water is being prevented from coming onto this area of land.
We can see the potential for it to become a well-established wetland but at the moment the flows aren't there.
So what we hope to see is that it will improve flood storage for the area and benefit those communities that are further downstream, but it will also benefit the ecology around here.
We can already see that it's very popular for wildfowl and other birds, so hopefully we'll see those populations increase.
And also with all the different wetland species that might grow like the reeds and the rushes and hopefully other plants that might come along with that, like yellow flag irises and things like that too.
Hopefully that will interact other species as well along with it, maybe some of the invertebrates and things like that as well, to create a more whole ecosystem here and restore it back to what it formerly would have been.

From a fisheries point of view, often slower-flowing areas are really good for the younger, the juvenile fish -- salmon smolt and things like that.
When they're in their very early stages after they've hatched, they need somewhere that's safer and it's got a slower flow.
And I can say today, from being out on the Dee, that it's quite a fast and powerful river, so having these lower-flow areas creates that diversity, and that's going to be really good for the biodiversity of this estate.

[Label: Wandering snail, Ampullaceana balthica]

[Label: Greater water boatman, Notonecta glauca]

[Label: Whirligig beetle, Gyrinus substriatus]

[Label: Common pondskater, Gerris lacustris]

[Label: Great diving beetle, Dytiscus marginalis]

[Label: Water rail (juvenile), Rallus aquaticus]

Jamie
So what we've done today is we've gone in and undertaken a technique called electro-fishing. It's a very clever technique; it passes an electric current through the water.
Any fish within about two feet of the hand-held ring are drawn towards the ring; they're drawn out from wherever they're hiding.
We safely, carefully net them out with hand nets.
As soon as they're taken out the water, the fish recover into buckets that we have.
We've found stone loach, sticklebacks and we found minnows at most sites as well.
The species that we are missing is either salmon or trout, and we would hope in the future with the habitat works taking place that those are two species that should return.
After we did the electro-fishing, we did some kick samples to look at the aquatic invertebrate population.
That involves three minutes of kicking all the rocks and such like at the bottom to dislodge any invertebrates and insects living in the bed of the river.
The water flow then sweeps them into a hand net.
Then we do a further minute moving the net through the water column to try and collect any any invertebrates that live in the water column and underneath any overhanging vegetation.
For a further one minute we lift rocks and wood and such, and anything that we see, we scrape off and put into the net as well.
So that means that we collect a mix of all the invertebrates living in the watercourse.
And that's interesting because the different species need different water quality, need different habitats and also are a very important food source for fish and bird life.

Kacie
We've got mostly gammaris, which are freshwater shrimp -- you can see them scooting about all over.
The shrimp thrive in quite low quality water so they're quite a good indicator of water quality.

[Label: Freshwater shrimp, Gammarus pulex]

We've caught a couple of crayfish.
We caught an adult one electro-fishing, and we caught a little juvenile kick sampling that you can barely see.
You would never know that they were in here or stuck to your boots or your waders.
These are North American signal crayfish.

[Label: American signal crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus]

They burrow into bankings and make them totally unstable, so they cause a lot of erosion.
They also burrow in salmon and trout redds and destroy them, and they can release all the eggs and kill them.

[Label: Mayfly larva, Ephemeroptera]

Mayfly larva there.
Oh cool, here's a cased caddisfly.
Some are more pollution-tolerant than others, so it depends on what family it is.

[Label: Caddisfly larva, Trichoptera]

Phil
Historically, over many years, this used to be dredged to get the water off the land as quickly as possible and make the land useful for agricultural use.
The burn has been straightened; what you're left with is just a very silty, muddy burn that's really very straight.
What we want to see: we want a lot of meanders, we want a lot of twists and turns in the burn, and then that will produce a lot more habitats that are really good for a range of species.
What we're trying to do here is restore the burn by putting in big boulders that have been taken out when it's been dredged.
What you can imagine: you put a big boulder in, the water flow comes down and it will bounce off that boulder and it'll start hitting the banks and it'll start eroding that bank out, and you'll start to see some nice twists and turns appearing.
Those boulders are great because they hold back the water and they gather gravels.
Gravels are great for macroinvertebrates.
They're great as cover for fish.
Fish will often sit in the riffles behind boulders and they'll feed there, so you lose all of that by dredging it out.
Hopefully by putting our boulders in, over time we'll start seeing the return of the fish that should be here and a great increase in macroinvertebrates -- the bugs that live in here that the fish also feed on.

[Filmed and recorded at National Trust for Scotland Threave Nature Reserve
Speakers: Grace Prouse, Cbec Eco Engineering; Jamie Ribbens and Kacie Jess, Galloway Fisheries Trust; Phil Dowling, Ranger, NTS Threave
Executive Producer for NTS: Gareth Clingan
Executive Producer for Galloway Glens: McNabb Laurie
Project Manager for NTS: David Thompson
Producer for Galloway Glens: Dr Jan Hogarth
Production Assistant: Betty Stephenson
Funded and Supported by: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Dumfries & Galloway Council
Film commissioned as part of Threave One Hundred Year Landscape Restoration Project
Filmed and produced by John Wallace, 2023]

Transcript

One speaker: David Thompson

Biodiversity: the variety of lifeforms found in a place

Treecreeper, Certhia familiaris

Song thrush, Turdus philomelos

Great tit, Parus major

Chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs

Greylag goose, Anser anser

Ash, Fraxinus excelsior

Buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terristris

Spear thistle, Cirsium vulgare

Small white, Pieris rapae

Meadow brown, Maniola jurtina

Honey bee, Apis mellifera

Creeping thistle, Cirsium arvense

Red kite, Milvus milvus

Spotted flycatcher, Muscicapa striata

Willow warbler, Phylloscopus trochilus

How many species of plant?

Creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens

Yorkshire fog, Holcus lanatus

Narrow-leaved ribwort, Plantago lanceolata

Cuckoo flower, Cardamine praetensis

David
The whole aim of this project is to increase the biodiversity.

[Common mouse ear chickweed, Cerastium fontanum]

I've seen a variety of different plants arrive back, and I'm not saying they're rare but I've not seen them there in my time.
This place is a hub of biodiversity.
Having that store of things here, that's going to help.

[Germander speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys]

I really do hope that it does spread, whether that's physically spreading or by inspiring others to do the same.
But yes, that biodiversity is going to spread. I'm going to be confident and say it's going to spread.

[Filmed and recorded at National Trust for Scotland Threave Nature Reserve
Narrated by: David Thompson
Production Assistant: Betty Stephenson
Executive Producer for NTS: Gareth Clingan
Executive Producer for Galloway Glens: McNabb Laurie
Project Manager for NTS: David Thompson
Producer for Galloway Glens: Dr Jan Hogarth
Funded and Supported by: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Dumfries & Galloway Council
Film commissioned as part of Threave One Hundred Year Landscape Restoration Project
Filmed and produced by John Wallace, 2023]

Transcript

Speakers: lots of children; Mary Smith (Camp leader of Go Wild!); David Thompson (Head Ranger, NTS); Claire Williamson (Senior Archaeologist, Rathmell Archaeology);

Adult 1
Ah, look at all these butterflies over here.

[Young people chatter as they walk along the path]

Adult 1
This flows into the river.

Child 1
I saw different kinds of fish and stuff this morning when we were in the river.
I saw a couple of shrimps as well. That was good.

Child 2
We've seen badger nests, we've seen swans, we've seen ... crayfish, I think it was called?

I got fish!

Child 3
Nice! I've got like a whole family of water beetles.

Child 4
I've enjoyed going out to go in the water.
I've mostly enjoyed being outside and being able to play out in nature.

Child 5
They look like ... salmon fish.

Adult 1
You think they're salmon? Right, that's your guess.

Mary
We're here because we've just finished a week of Go Wild!, which is a week-long outdoor camp for 10 children who are just about to transition into S1 at high school.

David
People have been in the landscape for thousands of years; and to have people here now, it's a great opportunity to speak with people and engage with them, especially young people like this week, because they are our future.
It's important that they get to know why nature is important and conservation, and they can take that away from this week back home to their parents and hopefully they'll be inspired enough to carry it on.

Child
Yeah, it's in this area so if we dig out this bit, we should find it.

Claire
Here today I've come out to help with the Go Wild! camp and we had a wee go at doing some metal detecting in a wee area of grass just by the car park.
We managed to find surprisingly quite a lot in the 45 minute period over a very small area -- mostly some pound coins but we did manage to find a rather large horse harness buckle which was lovely and also a George V coin which dates back to 1920 and even parts of a toy truck, so a bit of everything!

Adult
Oh! What's in here? I think I see something. It looks ... oh, what have we got? Oh, it's an old ound coin. That's cool.

David
Can I get a picture of that?

Claire
There's archaeology, right everywhere you walk, right under your feet, wherever you're stepping.
Because people have been walking this land for thousands and thousands of years, you're actually going to find probably very little area that hasn't been walked on or touched or tampered with in some way by people at some point in the past.
The earliest evidence that we have for human habitation in the Threave estate was actually from a burnt hazelnut shell that we found on Little Wood Hill.
From a radiocarbon date from that, we got it as being 8500 BC which puts it in the Mesolithic period.
We know from the hazelnut shell that's actually a favourite snack of the Mesolithic people.

Rivers would have been a big form of communication.
That would have been one way of people connecting with other people.
It would have been transporting trade but also it would have been a source of food, which would have been very important back then.
There's no way to avoid living off the land.
We've been doing it for millennia and we are still doing it, no matter how much you feel like you're maybe separated from it because we're all inside our houses and buildings or offices or whatever -- you are always going to be reliant on the land around you.
It's very important to how you live your life.
It's always giving you the resources that you need.

Mary
We are part of nature and we belong here, and it's right for children to feel that and know that and feel it's their home.

David
I get a great deal of satisfaction about being out in nature.
I just absolutely love seeing wildlife.
I love seeing plants; I love seeing animals, birds -- it just makes you feel whole

Mary
Take any chance you get to be outside.
Sometimes the idea of getting out and going outside is just like meeeeeh, but once you're out, honestly it's worth it and it will continue to be worth it for the rest of your life.
It's probably the best thing that you can do for yourself and for the people around you.
Just to get out, even if it's only for a half an hour a day. Just find a place, be in it.

Child 2
I just like the look of it and how the weather changes every second.

Child 1
I would say it's a great pleasure to be in it and look after it.

Child 4
Come here, have fun and don't stick in the house all day playing electronics ...

Child 2
... because it's better being outside than cooped up in the house.

Child 6
The feeling of this is just great; it's completely awesome being here.

Child 7
I don't know -- it just makes me feel happy and just looking at all the nature, it just fills me with joy.

[Filmed and recorded at National Trust for Scotland Threave Nature Reserve
Project Manager for NTS: David Thompson
Executive Producer for NTS: Gareth Clingan
Executive Producer for Galloway Glens: McNabb Laurie
Producer for Galloway Glens: Dr Jan Hogarth
Funded and Supported by: Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership; The National Lottery Heritage Fund; Dumfries & Galloway Council
Film commissioned as part of Threave Estate One Hundred Year Landscape Restoration Project
Production Assistant: Betty Stephenson
Filmed and produced by John Wallace, 2023]