Mar Lodge Estate National Nature Reserve
At Mar Lodge Estate, in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park, we're working with nature towards a 200-year vision.
In the summer of 2016, a pair of hen harriers bred at Mar Lodge Estate and successfully raised four chicks; this was the first time in living memory. Eight years later, around 12 hen harrier nesting territories across the estate and other breeding raptors such as white-tailed eagles.
Twelve may not seem large in numerical terms, but in conservation terms, it’s huge. Not only are hen harriers under threat in the UK, but they’re also an indicator species of healthy habitats. Their return and continuing presence at Mar Lodge is emblematic of the progress made on the Trust’s 200-year landscape-scale conservation and ecological restoration programme here.
Through this ongoing work, the landscape that hen harriers and other birds see as they soar high above the Cairngorms National Park is transforming yearly. The ancient Caledonian pine forest and other woodlands are regenerating, peatlands are being restored, and key habitats in the Trust’s Plan for Nature are being restored and connected.
The project also offers less visible benefits, including carbon storage, climate change mitigation, flood risk management, and biodiversity gains. These are all part of a wider vision for the estate as a place that ’connects habitats, wildlife and people, past, present and future, integrating conservation learning, recreation, field sports and culture in one vast and diverse landscape.’
Regenerating woodlands
The longest-running conservation project at Mar Lodge Estate is the regeneration of the ancient Caledonian pine forest — primarily through controlling deer numbers and grazing. This has allowed native pine, birch, rowan and willow to recover and seed across a vast area in glens Derry, Lui, Luibeg and Quoich. In 2011, there were around 155 hectares of naturally regenerated pinewood; by 2021, it had increased more than tenfold to 1972 hectares.
Woodland restoration is underway in Glen Geldie, too. Around 120,000 native trees have been planted in fenced enclosures, intended as a seed source for future natural regeneration and riparian tree cover for wild salmon spawning grounds.
Deer management also facilitates the reintroduction of montane willow scrub, restoring a rare habitat that supports upland species from alpine plants to black grouse. Shaila Rao, the Trust’s Conservation Manager at Mar Lodge Estate: ’A real highlight for me in 2024 has been seeing our montane willows continue to thrive. Research has shown us that downy willows are in a precarious position in the Cairngorms after centuries of decline, so it’s great to see them bouncing back in our high coires.’
Restoring peatlands
Around 5,500 hectares of peatland cover Mar Lodge Estate, and a multi-year programme to restore degraded peatland in Glen Geldie is using a variety of approaches including building dams and revegetating dried-out gullies.
The work mitigates climate change by keeping carbon locked in the peat rather than being released into the atmosphere. It’s also improving habitats for plants and invertebrates, which in turn supports wildlife along the peatland food chain, such as golden plover and dunlin.
Supporting rare species
An amazing 5,356 species have been recorded at Mar Lodge, including 86 species listed as priorities, partnerships, or surveys and research priorities in the Trust’s Plan for Nature. These include hen harriers, narrow-headed ants, and twinflowers. Conservation activity for such species ranges from monitoring to habitat management to translocation.
While climate change brings risks and pressures for species such as ptarmigans, dotterels, and alpines, our conservation work is delivering a succession of nature wins — from rising numbers of twinflower and aspen locations to the first discovery of lesser butterfly orchids at Mar Lodge for 40 years.
Monitoring the estate
Those and other wins have come to light through intensive monitoring of the estate, which was carried out to assess its ecological health, gauge the impacts of different interventions, and guide future conservation planning.
Like so much else at Mar Lodge, monitoring ranges in scope from vast to virtually microscopic. At one end of the scale, explains Andrew Painting, Conservation Officer at Mar Lodge Estate, there is monitoring of 36 narrow-headed ant queens released on the estate; then you have bigger projects such as invertebrate surveying over the past couple of years, which has recorded 190 species of invertebrates for the first time; and then you have landscape-scale activity, such as regular audits of eleven 1km transects of regenerating woodland, which this year showed the highest number and distribution of seedlings since monitoring began in 1996.
What next?
Plans for 2025 include continuing woodland regeneration, peatland restoration, species conservation, and monitoring, all done as a team endeavour across Mar Lodge’s deer stalkers, rangers, estate team and ecology team, and in partnership with volunteers and visitors. Public engagement work remains high on the agenda, inspiring visitors to join us in making Mar Lodge Estate better for nature and educating them on responsible access – especially on the dangers of wildfires, which can wipe out years of regeneration progress in just a few hours.
There are also plans for a floodplain management project to improve wetland habitats and a project to bring another 100 hectares of Caledonian pinewood into the regeneration zone.
None of this conservation activity at Mar Lodge Estate could take place without the generosity of the Trust’s members and supporters and also the many organisations that have partnered with us on different projects, including the Cairngorms National Park Authority, Peatland Action, NatureScot, Scottish Forestry, Dee District Salmon Fishery Board and River Dee Trust. We’re grateful to all of them, along with the National Lottery Heritage Fund and private donors like the Easter Charitable Trust, who helped to bring Mar Lodge Estate into our care in 1995.
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