Field Notes: Skill sharing on Nevis

Nevis Conservation Officer Julia Robertson helps a group of UHI students gain practical skills and learn about the Trust's approaches to land use and habitat management.

It was great to have the help from UHI students on the Countryside Skills with Ranger Training course recently at Nevis.

^ The students got stuck in with some essential monitoring of our marked seedlings and dwarf heath plots assessing levels of browsing and tree regeneration. This work gets carried out each year and helps support our herbivore management and work more widely within the Nevis Landscape Partnership.

^ Earlier in the month the UHI group joined me on Ben Nevis for some much needed path work. Last year’s figures saw just over 167,000 visitors using the mountain path. This level of footfall has a significant impact on path infrastructure and therefore path maintenance work is essential to manage visitor impacts, preventing erosion and desire lines forming. We focused our efforts on clearing the water bars and cross drains which accumulate fast with debris and fixing a small area of stone pitching.

Big thanks to the students for their efforts and wishing them well for future work in the conservation world.