A view worth preserving

Last Saturday (the 28th), I (Andrea) volunteered to join in the effort to rid Ben Lomond of Wilding Pines. "Wilding pines" is the general term given to various pine trees that self-sow on the wind, covering the hills around here and squeezing out all the natives. The worst offenders are the Douglas Fir trees, but the list is quite long and includes pretty much every introduced conifer.

It was a nice day, and the thought was that I wanted to do some exercise anyway, so I may as well meet some new people and do a bit of good at the same time!

In this first photo you can see the two types of forest up on the hill. The bushier stuff in the foreground is native beech forest, with the obviously pointy pines in the distance. It's a bit of a losing battle but the efforts at the moment are on preventing the spread of the pines, rather than trying to rid the hills of all the pines. The dead brown trees in the centre of the picture are the ones felled last year, if you can see those!


This is the sort of countryside I was working on. The downside to being a bit fitter is that the group automatically delegated the steeper bits to me! You can see a few of the Douglas Fir seedlings in the foreground.




And here's a view up towards the summit - that's mostly Beech forest on the left of the photo.

It was a very rewarding day - they estimate that over the weekend about 11 thousand seedlings were removed. I'd believe that easily, I think I removed over 250 in my 5 hours, and there were about 50 volunteers on each of the two days. It was hard work though, and my arm muscles are pleased I only did one day!