Cameron Cosgrove

Scottish Eagle Disturbance from Forestry Vehicles

Very little work has taken place on the potential impact of vehicle disturbance on breeding Golden Eagles and White-tailed Eagles. Determining whether the routine use of vehicles on forest roads adversely impacts on these two species is important to help inform forest management in Scotland. In 2015–16, my team and I undertook a pilot study on the national forest estate in mainland Argyll and Lochaber which investigated the impact of routine forest road traffic on 13 incubating Golden Eagles and White-tailed Eagles. Observations showed that incubating eagles sometimes responded to sound and visual stimuli from passing forest traffic. However, no discernible responses were recorded during 46 vehicles passes (61%), minor discernible responses were recorded during 29 vehicle passes (38%) and moderate discernible responses were only recorded once during vehicle passes (1%). Forest road traffic did not cause incubating eagles to leave or abandon any nests studied during periods of observation. The full paper can be read here.

This work was used by Scottish Forestry to inform best practice around the use of vehicles in estates with eagles during the breeding season. Now a “no stopping zone’ is in place around active nests to reduce disturbance.

I presented this work at the ECOEVO conference in British Columbia in 2017.

Forest Management and Freshwater Pearl Mussels

Most of the world’s remaining globally threatened freshwater pearl mussel populations occur in northern European rivers and streams in partially or wholly forested catchments. As a consequence, sustainable forest management in this area has a pivotal role to play in conserving this species and its aquatic habitat. We researched how forestry operation could change to protect and restore pearl mussel habitats in the north of Scotland.

By considering the unique life-cycle of the freshwater pearl mussel, forest management effort in the north of Scotland has been directed towards:

establishing the baseline conditions (pearl mussel population status) in forested catchments,

blocking forest drainage ditches to reduce forestry derived siltation and runoff,

managing harvesting in such a way as to minimise impacts on the pearl mussel and its host fish,

instream barrier management and

tree restocking/planting.

You can read the published article here.