Bamff Wildland

Martha
It is truly amazing what one creature can do.

Sophie
It’s extraordinary, it’s really extraordinary. I think it’s really inspired us because you look all over the world and you see stories about habitat degradation, destruction, and the loss of species. We ourselves have noticed that there are species that no longer visit because of that broader picture, because of modern farming, that we ourselves are part of. But watching these little areas just become wild has been a great privilege in a time where the reverse story is sadly the norm.

We were really inspired by Knepp Estate in Sussex when we heard about them. They were trying to do kind of hardcore arable farming and they were hemorrhaging money because they didn’t have the right soil and they decided, I think around 15 years ago, to just stop. They stopped farming altogether. They let the land scrub up, but they also realized that you can’t fully do it without the help of grazers, specifically cows, pigs and ponies because these species ancestors were native to Britain. There’s an important (similar to the beavers in a way) relationship between grazing, disruption, and growing. They now have them in a low density so everything doesn’t just get chewed up and they have scrub everywhere! It looks like a British version of the African bush and there’s so little of that land in Britain that people just are not used to seeing it. The extraordinary thing that happened there is species that conservation bodies have been desperately trying to encourage have thrived there far more than on any nature reserve: nightingales, turtle doves and purple emperor butterflies.

“When you actually decide to put nature back in charge, rather than trying to manage too much, all of these connections are made that maybe we haven’t even understood yet, it’s just always more complicated than we really know.”

Long Tailed Tits, Photo Dave Maric

And so, when we’re trying to manage it, we’re never quite getting it right.

We don’t have as much land as Knepp, at the moment we’re doing about a third of our land. We’ve taken 12 fields out of agriculture altogether and our goal is to secure the whole perimeter fence so we can put in these conservation grazers and we’re just going to see what happens. We negotiated with our farming contractors to take the sheep off. They were all removed on the on the 31st of December. There can be tensions between farming and rewilding, but we are very lucky that our farming contractors are very open minded and interested in the project. We are working closely with them and they will be handling the livestock on the wildland.

Martha
You’ve spoken about your Dad’s inspiration or motivation to do this, I wonder if you just want to speak a bit more about that and what inspired you to be part of it?

Sophie
I grew up seeing all this happening so there is strong sense of place for me. It just feels like home. I think the thing that motivates me is a shared feeling.

“Everyone that is plugged into the environmental world is in a state of grief, that everything has gone so badly wrong. What is so privileged is to have the option of having some say over a bit of land and to make these kinds of decisions about it. It feels like something tangible that keeps you sane”.

Most people feel so powerless and although it’s just a little parcel of land here, at least it’s something that I can do really meaningful important work in.

Martha
You mentioned your Dad studied environmental science. Can you talk more about the expertise or skills you all had that helped make this project real, but also that you have learnt along the way, as you’ve said there was a lot of going with the flow and letting nature do it’s thing.

Sophie
It’s really hard to describe, I think it’s more of an ethos than a skill. We’re not super skilled up in practical ecology.  My Dad’s quite a good ecologist but not really by training. I guess there’s just the thing of being interested in living somewhere that you are always learning because you’re always asking questions, bearing witness and looking. Then also because a lot of people come here and are actually skilled it rubs off on us. We have a lot of books in our house but we’re just learning, actually we want to learn more field skills because there’s so much monitoring to do for our project. So, we are really keen to learn better how to take things like soil samples and practical stuff like that.

Martha
It very much sounds like a learning with the land, learning  with the beavers, rather than going in with a grand plan in your heads. I know next to nothing about ecology but from what I have read you can go into things with a grand plan but really you are forced into seeing how it goes.

Sophie
Yeah, I mean, I think we want to know what has happened so that’s why we are doing quite a lot of monitoring. We’ve got a steering group who are helping us and most of them are science trained. One of them is doing a lot of monitoring on the ground because he lives locally and he’s an ecologist. We have also developed five big questions that we would like to try to answer about the effect or the impact that this kind of management, or lack of management, has on the land. But yeah, I think you have to be quite fluid- how many cows is the right number of cows so that the grazing isn’t too much but they have enough impact? You can’t answer that, you can figure out how many cows you think we ought to have per area, but you can only really know by monitoring and looking at what they’re doing and thinking okay, maybe they’ve eaten a bit too many young saplings! So we’re just going to start with very low densities and if we think that the land can take a little bit more then we can put it up.

Martha
Sophie, you have spoken about that feeling of connection to the place where you’re living and working, and it does seem like a bit of an obvious question when you’re in such a diverse and beautiful environment but how would you describe your relationship to place or to the natural world around you?

Sophie
It’s just indescribable. It’s this really visceral sense of love and care and fascination. Just on every scale that you look; you can look at the entire landscape, and then you can go and look at some lichen on a tree. Everything is like a landscape in its own right and everything has a texture and depth. You know, you’re always learning just by looking, it triggers ideas, you look at something and you think, gosh, that’s interesting. For example, we’ve got this old Victorian boating pond and the beavers have mended the barrage, so it’s actually filled up a bit more than it used to be. They planted spruce around it in the 50s, but they planted them too close the water so quite a lot of them have fallen because the root plates are very shallow. As soon as the wind blows they fall over. When you look at what’s going on around these root plates you realise there’s a little pond where the roots were, and then you realise oh, there are all sorts of things growing on the roots, or sometimes a new sapling will grow because it’s just out of reach from a Roe deer.

“You see how this landscape acquires more dimensions, because of all these disruptions.”

Long Eared Owl, Photo Dave Maric

Every time I go out, I notice something little that’s happening, and I think, isn’t that interesting? I haven’t been anywhere for a whole year because I have a toddler and lockdown makes it really hard, I think the thing that has kept me sane is just the fact that there is such infinite variety in such a small area.

Martha
That’s so lovely, I can completely relate. So much of your project is based around the climate and environmental crisis and you’ve just spoken about Covid which we’re still very much enduring. I wonder if we could talk a wee bit more about crisis and in what ways it informs or effects your work?

Sophie
It has a huge effect. It feels really urgent. It feels like there are no more excuses. I mean, of course, we’ve had to answer questions about finances and how it’s going to work. Luckily, our farming operation wasn’t terribly lucrative which means we’re not losing out as much as we might be. Currently there’s no government funding for what we’re doing and it’s actually worse in Scotland than in England, which is crazy. But the thing that makes us just think, well we’re just going to have to do this crazy mad thing, take a big risk and leap into the unknown, is that we just can’t put this off any longer. We just can’t.

Martha
From your experience in rewilding and reintroducing beavers are there top priorities that you think people should be focusing on when it comes to the climate and environmental crisis?

Sophie
I think that everyone has their own unique talent, and the best thing really is that everyone does what they do best. To solve a crisis, you need so many different types of minds and talent. I think in terms of something like government policy that different types of land use need to be incentivised and, in some cases, enforced…maybe that’s a bit draconian, but I think that we’ve got to this point in Scotland where we’re famous for the natural beauty of the land but actually it’s sooo depleted and has this whole history of abuse. I think landowners shouldn’t be getting away with it. Despite being part of it, I feel dubious about the concept of land ownership, I mean it’s the surface of the earth and if you can own it at all then you should be a steward of it. The government need to be much, much bolder and enable radical change. Something that Peter Cairns from ‘Scotland: The Big Picture’ said at a webinar called ‘Scotland, The First Rewilding Nation’ was, “you can’t address exponential loss with incremental change”. That really stayed with me because I think there’s a lot about conservation, even the word itself is about conserving, but when you have a situation of so much depletion you can’t just conserve you have to actually increase and multiply. And that is what rewilding is.

Martha
Amazing points. How do you feel about the future in light of these crises?

Sophie
It’s really frightening. I try not to think about the future to be honest, but I’ve got a two-year-old and I remember when she was born thinking my God. I mean, we’re so lucky to be where we are that she’ll probably be absolutely fine but I’m thinking about so many other kids born in countries where we don’t know what climate change will do to them.

We have to have hope, we have to have hope. There’s that book by Rebecca Solnit called ‘Hope in the Dark’, which she wrote during the George Bush era, which is kind of depressing in itself because everything has gotten much worse, but I think that we have to find in ourselves hope, in order to do the work that we need to do, because even if everything is a disaster, we have to live in hope otherwise it’s just impossible.

Martha
I wholeheartedly share that ethos. I had a question about the past too and how the past informs what you do, whether it’s past practices or recovering from the past, how much of an influence does the past have?

Sophie
This ties in to a thought I had recently, at Bamff, because it’s a very old estate, it’s got this really planned landscape that was designed in the 18th century, and the crazy thing is that we’ve got this map and it shows all these beech trees and exactly where they’re going to be planted… but it’s only us who see the landscape that they planned, because that’s how long it takes to grow a beech tree. And at the same time as we are seeing this planned landscape emerge, we’re also dismantling the planning and allowing beavers to randomly cut them down! You have quite a lot of species here that aren’t native, because people just didn’t consider “nativeness” to be important, or the way this jigsaw of life all fits together and works. One of the things we have been trying to do is small-scale planting of native species that we don’t have so many of and that we’d like to encourage in the future. But at another level, it’s also just about acceptance that we’re not going to go back to some kind of ideal time with all these pristine untouched ecosystems, it’s always going to be something else that involves aspects of decisions that were made, and that’s okay…it’s also kind of interesting.

Part of Bamff Estate  from above, Photo Dave Maric

Martha
Who do you draw inspiration and guidance from? You’ve already mentioned a few names but who would you say is showing great leadership around rewilding or species reintroduction?

Sophie
Well, we have some really wonderful advisors in our steering group so they are a strong influence. George Monbiot is a strong influence too because he wrote about rewilding. I think it originates from 70’s America or something, but he’s the person that brought it to Britain and to the forefront of our minds. It was him coming here once that prompted the first thought about doing this bigger scale rewilding because he looked at the beaver dams and was like, “this is great, but what are you doing with these fields?”

There are amazing projects happening elsewhere in the world, but I don’t know, maybe it comes back to this kind of land ownership structure in Scotland that there are so few people doing stuff like this. I mean, there are some great projects and there are lovely RSPB reserves and things like that, but I think there’s also a lot of heavy bureaucratic processes. I’m not anti-bureaucracy, but I think there’s a lot of micromanagement and just stuff not happening fast enough or big enough.

Martha
What does community mean for what you do?

Sophie
I feel that community is really, really important and we’ve really tried to engage the community from the beginning of this project. We had a bug counting day for getting people involved in doing a baseline survey of what was there – and more are arranged for this year. And then we had a tree planting weekend in conjunction with the Woodland Trust which was great and will happen again too. I should say, they have been a great partner, in the answer to the previous question. The tree planting weekend was lovely because we had many neighbors living close to here come that we hardly ever see so it was really moving. We’re also working with Perth and Kinross Countryside Trust, which has been a big thing for us, and because we’re on the Cateran Trail people are able to come through. Obviously in Scotland people have the right to roam anyway, but it gives people an obvious point of access. In fact, PKCT applied to the Drumderg Wind Farm fund for money to make a network of paths on our hill, so that’s going to allow more locals to come and experience this place.

Rainbow at Bamff, Photo Dave Maric

Martha
I read on your website that you’ve got a small community that all live in very close quarters, so there’s a wee close-knit community as well, is that right?

Sophie
Yes, everyone at Bamff is lovely. We’re quite spread out and don’t always see lots of each other, but I think there’s a lot of good will. We saw it strongly when Aileen, our wonderful office manager – and so much more – who also lived here, died of cancer. It was during the first lockdown last spring, so we couldn’t attend the funeral, but everyone on Bamff turned out to line the route of the hearse. It was incredibly moving. One thing I am hoping to do before long is to create a space at Bamff where people can gather a bit more.

I think rewilding can be amazing for community because rather than remove space, it can actually create it. There’s a little wood near the back drive, and Dick Craig runs the Woodland Skills Centre there. Until quite recently there was also a forest play-scheme, and my dad pointed out that with two small businesses running here, the wood was more valuable standing than it was for timber.

Martha
I had a wonderful conversation last week with the West Stormont Community Woodland Group and that’s exactly what they were talking about-the value of the of the woods for all different parts of the community and how that changes your perspective altogether on “value”. Can you talk more about the networks that you’re part of that support your work?

Sophie
Well we’re now part of two rewilding networks, which is amazing. One of them is called Northwoods, which is the landowner and manager section of ‘Scotland: The Big Picture’ and that’s just getting going. It’s already been really helpful. Then there’s one called Rewilding Britain, they have an online forum so you can ask questions, and everyone’s got a member profile on the website, it’s really nice. Both of them are brand new networks, which goes to show that there’s a sudden momentum behind rewilding. It’s so helpful because everyone in these networks is a pioneer and all of us are frantically learning about a whole number of things, so it’s just enormous to have the support of other people in the same boat.

Martha
A reoccurring theme that has been coming up in these interviews is the conflict between big landowners, as you’ve already said, trying to do something different with the land can be very difficult given that. How do you get people on board?

Sophie
It’s a really good question. I was talking to somebody from Savilles the other day, who was really excited and taken aback by our project. His Dad was quite a mainstream farmer down in Norfolk or somewhere and he was saying they have this mentality that will have to change but it’s like moving a giant ship, it just takes time. I try not to make things too personal, because I think it is mainly political and cultural. That said, there is a deep rift between the mindset that says we have a duty to control nature and the one that says we are part of nature and must live within it. Generally, farmers are trying to produce food for the nation and they have a lot of pressure from supermarkets, commerce and late capitalism- so I have got sympathy. But it’s hard not to get frustrated now and then! I think that’s why we need governments. We need governments to show leadership – to make these decisions for us because so many land practices are unsustainable and that’s the reality. It’s funny because I think most very commercial farmers see themselves as living in the real world and see environmentalists as kind of dreamers, but the cold reality is that we’re in an environmental crisis and we have to face up to it, we have to change our practices. I don’t know what’s going to happen. My mum has this theory that a lot of farmers’ daughters are persuading their dads to shift their thinking, because they go out into the world – maybe go to university – so perhaps the next generation will bring a new attitude.

Martha
That’s a nice thought. You’ve just said there needs to be more government action on land use, how is what you do then affected by the current political system?

Sophie
When we started out trying to do this project we wondered if there would be any kind of public money for it…there wasn’t. And public money, for example, if you look on the agri-environment payments page there’s a long list of environmental interventions you can make on your farm, but when I went to an advisor on conservation funding he said “your project doesn’t tick any of the boxes, it’s too holistic and it’s not micromanaged”. For example, if you want wader scrapes you have to do things like cutting rushes at a certain time of year, or if you want to grow a hedgerow, it has to be this number of plants per millimeter or whatever. So, all of the interventions are naturally to do with concrete, very specific action, and none of the payments are for trying to actually let nature take its course.

If you asked the question, how is the government influencing what you’re doing? I’d say they’re doing the opposite. I have a lot of respect for Nicola Sturgeon, I think in so many ways she’s a really impressive leader and I probably agree with her about a lot of stuff, but when it comes to the environment the SNP have failed us and it’s really upsetting. I don’t have anything against them, but when I speak to people in the environment movement nearly everyone says the same thing, which is that Fergus Ewing is single handedly blocking environmental policy in Scotland from being progressive because he is totally in hock to landowners. I think as a party they’re making a really big strategic error because the majority of Scots are actually really in favor of quite radical environmental action, I read a poll saying three quarters of Scots were in favor of rewilding.

Martha
Are there things you would develop or love to do if resources were unconstrained? Or if they were thought of or managed differently?

Sophie
Well, past funding our fence, we have quite a lot of small interventions we would love to do, and will find a way. Things like ponds and scrapes, enrichment planting, nesting boxes, osprey platforms. Then there are slightly more ambitious things like reintroduction or breeding projects. At Knepp they have white storks, and I’ve heard that black storks would be a good idea here in Scotland, and cranes. There are some cranes now in Aberdeenshire I believe, but it would be really nice to have more. Aigas – I should have mentioned them before as another source of inspiration – they are a field study center in Invernessshire, run by John Lister-Kaye and they have a wild cat breeding program which is something we’d love to do. But it is costly. We have caught wildcats, or ‘good hybrids’ on trail cameras here, but the species is so threatened, it is worth actively breeding them. We’d love to reintroduce things like Lynx, but they need a huge territory and everyone around us is a sheep farmer, so it’s not something we can even think of doing on our own! But there are also smaller species, for example, great crested newts, pool frogs. There’s a really critical relationship between beavers and amphibians because beavers ensure that wet areas are wet all year round and so when you have beavers you can do more successful amphibian reintroductions. These awesome 18-year-old boys in the north of England have a project called ‘Celtic Reptile and Amphibian’, they are talking about how there are lots of reptiles and amphibians that are either extinct or extremely rare that we should be looking to bring back. Anyway, there’s huge possibilities when it comes to things like that, but all of them require funding. If we had the funds, we would love to do all of them (assuming our land was suitable)! We also want to develop an education program and have some ruined farm buildings that we want to eventually turn into functional buildings so that we can educate people about the environment.

Cattle, Photo Dave Maric

Martha
I’ve only got one question left but before that I just have to ask because I’m so fascinated with the whole process- how on earth do you bring beavers from Bavaria to Bamff?!

Sophie
So, they had to be quarantined first but basically, there’s a guy called Gerhard Schwab and he is, believe it or not, the beaver meister of Bavaria [laughter ensues] isn’t that amazing? His job is to manage any conflict between people and beavers in Bavaria. When anyone, a farmer or whoever, has a problem with a beaver he is called up and he goes over to meet them, he says he always brings a couple of soft toy beavers to give to their children to win them over.  He has an order of priority for his reaction to whatever the problem is. Either you tell the farmer “oh it’s not that bad you have to just live with it”, or you say, “okay we’re going to do some mitigation here”. And there are some various tried and tested mitigation techniques, from literally just wrapping a tree with some wire to putting tubes in a dams so the water can get through. Then he’ll do translocation, where he’ll trap them and move them. His absolutely last resort is to shoot them- something so different from Scotland. Whereas he’s the only person in the whole of Bavaria that has a license to shoot beavers, and he’s an ecologist, in Scotland they gave out dozens of licenses to people that were just farmers and gatekeepers. They shot 87, a fifth of the population, in 2019. Anyway, so Gerhard Schwab had some spare beavers because of having translocation issues so he brought some across the channel. The first ones we had were in quarantine at Kent Wildlife Park and the next ones were at Edinburgh Zoo.

Martha
Wow. That is an epic story. How many do you think there are now?

Sophie
We have three families, and families usually have about six members because they have two kits on average and the kits stay with them until they’re almost two, just before their younger siblings arrive in spring.

Martha
I could talk to you for hours Sophie I really could, every single detail absolutely fascinates me. But I’ve only got one question left. We’ve already spoken about lots of fantastic moments, but in your journey, is there a particular moment or a memory which really meant something to you, that stays with you, maybe it made you realise wow, this is this is really worth it?

Sophie
I think the one thing that comes to mind when you say that is just going out and seeing the beavers at dusk, at certain times when I’ve gone out on my own I’m taken by surprise, they suddenly are really quite close and you catch their eye, in that moment you feel like an animal, you feel connected to nature and it shifts something inside of you that makes you feel renewed. I guess it also makes you feel a duty to do the best for them.