Citizen Science

As a group of science PhD students, we were all keen to have our trip contribute to some projects in the area. Scotland has a growing re-wilding scene and is pioneering the reintroduction of species like beavers, so getting involved in these projects seemed like a logical route.

While some local inhabitants like ticks and midges seem to be thriving, many of Scotland's native species like mountain birches and red squirrels are under threat and may well go the same way as their populations in the rest of the UK - next to zero. Citizen science projects like the mountain birch project and the red squirrel count allow anyone to submit sightings of these endangered species, and we set off on our expedition anticipating to contribute to these counts.  

Unfortunately, we saw no mountain birches, and the only red squirrels were on our beers.  

While disappointing, we were not lacking for company and saw tens of frogs, deer, adders, a lizard, far too many ticks, some leeches and more midges than we wanted to. 

We had also communicated with SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks) to see if some soil sampling on our route would be helpful to their global mycorrhizal sequencing project, but their focus was not in this area.  

Even if sampling was pursued, it would have been a difficult task to do while hiking. To properly contribute to these kinds of projects meaningfully we realized that they need to be the main focus.