Our Activities

We have finally completed our analysis of all the data we have been gathering from 40 highland estates as part of a strategic deer management planning project. It has been really interesting bringing together all the various sources of data, including counts, culls, socio-economic data and estate management objectives. The analysis has involved quantifying spatio-temporal trends in Red deer abundance and comparing them with the objectives of each estate in…

A new project we are just starting up aims to try and understand the dynamics of Red deer populations at varying spatial and temporal scales. The work involves modeling deer populations over a 30-year period across a number of adjacent estates in the Highlands, to try and understand more about the interactions of natural deer movements due to weather/behavior and movements of deer catalyzed by deer culling.

We’ve just started a new project on an upland plateau in the Highlands. An experimental trial has been set up to investigate a variety of approaches to restoring blanket bog vegetation on eroding bare peat surfaces at high altitude. The site comprises a complex mixture of intact mire and peatland in different erosional phases. The work involves measurements being made inside a large deer-fenced enclosure and outside it on similar…