Community charity, the Nevis Landscape Partnership (NLP), has been running the Nevis Nature Network project since 2024, bringing people together to restore nature across the 22,000-acre Nevis landscape. In today’s guest blog, project manager Ellie Corsie gives us an insight into how you get a multi-partner woodland regeneration project off the ground.

Our community was galvanized to pursue the Nevis Nature Network project after NatureScot’s 2021 surveys of the Ben Nevis protected sites revealed that 100% of woodland habitats surveyed were in “unfavourable condition”, meaning their ecological state was poor or declining.

The fragile fringes of the Nevis woodland network is largely made up of scattered, dying birch. Credit: Gus Routledge

As the Nevis Landscape Partnership doesn’t own any land, we’ve been working together with the largest landowners in the area for over two decades: JAHAMA Highland Estates (JHE), John Muir Trust (JMT), Glen Nevis Holidays (GNH) and Forestry & Land Scotland (FLS). 

We contracted woodland specialists, Strath Caulaidh Ltd and montane scrub specialists, Ian Strachan and Jim McIntosh, to survey existing habitats and identify current threats and opportunities for restoration. The recommendations were reviewed and endorsed by Trees For Life, Woodland Trust for Scotland and NatureScot.

The Nevis Landscape Partnership running a montane scrub workshop with landowners and specialists. Credit: Ellie Corsie

We discovered that high densities of deer and sheep are currently inhibiting tree growth, and our native woodlands could be restored and quadrupled in size by reducing deer and sheep numbers across the landscape.

As a partnership, we took time to discuss the reality of the recommendations and explore if and how they could be put into practice.

Red and roe deer are important native animals, and deer stalking is culturally significant to our community. We wanted to support the sustainable management of healthy deer populations, not remove this native species entirely. We wanted to strive for a better balance between healthy native woodlands and healthy deer.

Sheep farming provides employment for some local people so any possible changes to sheep management had to be carefully considered and managed sensitively by the landowners.

Dense regeneration inside the fenced enclosure on Coire Dearg.
Credit: Eliie Corsie.

JHE is the largest landholding in Lochaber. It covers the majority of our project area and far beyond. Deer move across vast areas so deer management is only effective if carried out across the whole landscape. Deer population modelling revealed that we would not be able to reach the full potential of local woodland restoration without JHE’s commitment to action.

Following a huge amount of work by the JHE team, they took the decision to roll these recommendations out across their land within the project area, and far beyond. A whopping 80,000 acres of JHE’s land has now been committed to native woodland regeneration. It is one of the UK’s largest woodland regeneration schemes.

This has unlocked the potential for other landowners in the area, such as Glen Nevis Holidays and the John Muir Trust, to achieve natural tree regeneration without deer fences.

Scottish rainforest at Steall Gorge, Glen Nevis. Credit: Nathan Berrie.

We are delighted that the future of our iconic ancient Caledonian pinewoods, Scottish rainforest and montane scrub has been secured. The fragile fringes of what was once a large woodland network will be revived and reconnected. In turn this will enable us to protect our most treasured and vulnerable species such as red squirrels, Atlantic salmon and whortle-leaved willow. The biodiversity and community of Lochaber will see and feel the impacts of this land-use shift for generations to come.

Ellie Corsie is Nevis Nature Network Project Manager for the Nevis Landscape Partnership.

To find out more about JAHAMA Highland Estates wider woodland regeneration project, read their blog.