Wild Strathfillan – Hydrological survey, Colin Burt Reserve

The Countryside Trust has been awarded funding through NatureScot’s Nature Recovery Fund to deliver the initial delivery phase of Wild Strathfillan. The Trust is working in partnership with land managers, local communities, environmental NGOs, businesses and the Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority to deliver this long-term project.

Wetland habitat restoration at the Colin Burt Reserve has been identified as one of several key nature restoration initiatives that will be delivered across the Strathfillan landscape over the next two years. The reserve is 16.5 hectares in area, with wetland habitat covering 9.5 hectares. Attempts to drain the wetland habitat for cattle and sheep grazing have been made in the past, but unsuccessfully. After the purchase in 2005, it has been unmanaged and is now dominated by Deschampsia cespitosa (Tufted hairgrass).

The site is situated on the floodplain of the River Dochart, and in addition to wetland habitat, the site includes a conifer plantation, grassland habitat, and areas of recent native woodland planting. The site floods extensively every winter, completely submerging the wetland habitat, right up to the conifer plantation. With sensitive management, we aim to reduce the grass cover, and increase botanical species diversity. We would like to do this by introducing some wetland features to increase habitat heterogeneity. This includes creating scrapes and ponds, as well as maintaining and increasing the existing botanically rich ditches that currently support Beaver on the site.