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Isle of Gigha Ranger Service – Protecting Gigha’s Woodlands Project
A tiny island on the west coast, the Isle of Gigha is the most southerly Hebridean island, and despite being all of seven miles long and one mile wide, it packs a punch in community-led environmental initiatives from removing tonnes of marine litter each winter, to weekly conservation volunteering, rivalling the biggest and very best environmental efforts anywhere.
The Isle of Gigha Ranger Service has been incredibly privileged to help facilitate a range of initiatives including our most recent invasive non-native species (INNS) and hedgerow project which is a real community success story.
Funded by NatureScot, we were able to engage a contractor to remove 16 hectares of Rhododendron ponticum, which is a real problem for our woodland regeneration and heathland habitats, skunk cabbage in our woodlands that reduce the biodiversity of these spaces, and local volunteers tackled the Himalayan balsam that was taking over croft land and residential gardens. To boot, the project funded a double fence line for 2270m of hedgerow on farm and private land to connect fragmented woodland habitat, as well to plant native species of tree including blackthorn, hawthorn, field maple, hazel and crab apple in order to provide the perfect mix to support the islands wildlife from birds and bats to butterflies, moths and small mammals. To put it another way, that’s 13,620 trees planted!
Hedge Planting on Gigha
The project all started due to an incredibly keen and enthusiastic group of residents who form Zero Carbon Gigha, a community group aiming to make the island a cleaner, greener place to live.
Zero Carbon Gigha and Beach Cleaning Station
The group had outlined island aims and desires in first weeks of meeting, two of those goals being to reduce and control the INNS, and increase woodland cover considering hedgerows. It is utterly marvellous to say that we have kick-started these very goals, and whilst by their nature are long-term visions, the strides that have been made up to now have seen these ambitions realised.
The group decide to explore a number of funding pots and held a community drop-in session to see how the residents of Gigha picture their land use, tree cover, and environmental priorities. The session concluded with a consensus on the removal of INNS, and a number of land managers, owners, and farmers showing great interest in hedgerows on their properties to assist with boundaries and stock shelter, as well as increasing the island’s biodiversity, and so the Protecting Gigha’s Woodlands was born.
The project faced a number of challenges from ferry disruption preventing contractors and deliveries reaching the island, the logistics of getting these materials to remote locations, as well as time restraints due to looming project end dates. However, the most outstanding aspect of this project was the community and volunteer involvement. Gigha has an incredible team of volunteers who work across the island to enhance and protect our natural spaces, and boy did they deliver in this project too. Weekly, our volunteers would be out tree planting and in previous years be tackling the ponticum in some of our most used and loved woodlands.
Rhododendron ponticum
To boot, the community also came together to help the Ranger Service deliver a residential volunteer weekend. The Isle of Gigha Camp and Motorhome Site offered discounts for volunteers who wanted to help us with tree planting and the Sound of Gigha festival committee provided an amazing dinner for our volunteers all to say thank you. The work that happens on Gigha would not be possible without volunteers, and the island is all the better for it.
Pier and Camping area at Gigha
We have only just completed all of our outcomes in March, and already the trees are beginning to grow and the invasive species haven’t yet reared their ugly heads from parts that were missed or have beaten their treatment. Our farms now have hedgerows that can support wildlife, benefit stock species, have improved boundary fencing and connect fragmented woodland pockets. And finally, our community can say that they have successfully achieved their first landscape scale environmental project, thought up by our residents and fulfilled by our local community, and a little bit of extra help. How fantastic.
Casey-Jo Zammit
Island Countryside Ranger
Isle of Gigha Heritage Trust
Ferry to Gigha – Image Credit – LateralNorth
