{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
By rights, Mick Drury should be writing this article. As the most experienced planting planner at Trees for Life, it was Mick who wrestled with the practical problems posed by the pandemic last year. With volunteers unable to share transport or accommodation, it was Mick who saw us through to workable solutions on the other side. Fate has passed the honour to me, but there will be more on that later.
Back in the simple days of February 2020, Mick was looking forward to another year of trees. Conservation Week volunteers and contractors were to be heading out to the bothy at Athnamulloch in Glen Affric as usual. Tens of thousands of trees, downy birches, dwarf birches, willows, oaks and aspens, were due to be delivered, ready for planting throughout the glen. At Dundreggan, Doug and the team were making similar plans to plant the new Carn na Caorach woodland. This site would be home to the montane ‘wee trees’, funded by the generous supported of hundreds of people who responded to our appeal in 2019.
All those plans went the same way as millions of other people’s intentions for 2020, when the pandemic turned everything upside down. As ever, the safety of our volunteers, contractors and staff was our first consideration. We put any work that couldn’t be done from home on hold. We found a way to keep the nursery in operation. But the challenges of getting tree planters to remote locations were considerable.
Mick and Doug considered a range of creative solutions. By the autumn they had found a pragmatic solution, to work with contractors, Loch Ness Trees, who took a campervan-based approach. They planted over 70,000 trees at Carn na Caorach over last autumn and this spring. They will plant another 20,000 in the autumn coming. Glen Affric has taken longer, but an enthusiastic team has finished planting 53,000 trees there. This is on ground belonging to both Forestry and Land Scotland, and National Trust for Scotland. Social distancing, hygiene and Covid-testing have been important steps in making this possible. We are grateful to our contractors for their willingness to add these procedures to their work.
The NatureScot-managed Biodiversity Challenge Fund helped make this planting possible. So too did the huge public support we received through fundraising appeals. Both projects focus on establishing new areas of mountain woodland. This includes planting rare species of montane willow grown at Dundreggan. The seeds for these willows was collected from remnant crag-bound colonies high above Glen Affric. This is challenging work.
All this work doesn’t even touch on Mick’s efforts to oversee fence construction and repairs in West Affric during the challenging winter. Rain, ice and big snow all combined with lockdown to throw a succession of obstacles at this project, supported by the same funding above. Perhaps the resulting need for rest is what clinched Mick’s decision to retire after 14 years of all-weather achievement and adventure with Trees for Life. Mick’s enthusiasm, knowledge and care for people were ever present. He’s been a Conservation Week guide for almost as long. I would say that he will be much missed by staff and volunteers alike. But I for one have every intention of holding him to his promise to continue with us as a guide and a volunteer.
You won’t escape us Drury!