Projects
Forestry Commission Scotland
- Client Comments:
"Many thanks for the robust visitor survey for Loch Katrine. It helped me enormously in producing two audience targeted interpretation strategies for Loch Katrine and The Great Trossachs Forest – it provided real substance and most definitely filled a dark hole in our knowledge of visitors in the area, great job!"
- Rob Robinson Heritage Consulting
"Deidre's input compiling a visitor survey and completing the project within a very short timescale was invaluable. It helped us compile a Interpretation Strategy for existing and potential visitors to the Loch Katrine afforestation project. Deidre's analysis of the information she collected helped us identify important projects and tourism opportunities which we had not envisaged". "Great work, thanks!".
- David Robertson, Visitor Services Manager - Forestry Commission Scotland
Loch Katrine is at the core of the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park and the focus of a large native woodland regeneration project, The Great Trossachs Forest.
The Loch Katrine area is visually stunning, coloured by the open expanses of water, steep wooded slopes and craggy mountain tops. However, its value is much greater than its visual beauty. Its associations with Rob Roy, Sir Walter Scott, the Romantic Movement and Victorian tourism, its resourcefulness as a source of timber and drinking water, its evidence of past inhabitants and land management, its iconic and rare native wildlife and patchwork of native woodland all contribute to a make this a special and unique place. The future management of the Loch Katrine catchment aims to dramatically enhance the environment on a landscape scale and provide improved and innovative access and interpretation and deliver economic, social and community benefits.
A Visitor Survey and Research Strategy for Loch Katrine was undertaken by Deidre Luzmore from Luzmore Consulting and an Interpretation Strategy was produced by Rob Robinson Heritage Consulting. Deidre worked closely with Rob Robinson and the Forestry Commission Scotland on this project as the visitor research results were crucial to the development of the visitor profile and the target audiences.
Visitor surveys are important for nature conservation areas because:
- establishing visitor profiles can help focus marketing campaigns to relevant audiences.
- knowing the characteristics of your audience can focus decision making on the best marketing methods to use to target visitors before they arrive and what interpretation to provide when they arrive in a way that is relevant and enjoyable. Leisure and tourism is all inclusive and everyone needs to feel that they are connecting.
Information on visitors to forest parks is essential for planning and managing recreation and tourism in order to provide for good experiences, and also for the promotion of public health and well-being, as well as for protecting nature and cultural heritage in an efficient way.
A visitor survey is one means of carrying out so-called participatory planning. Through the survey, visitors can convey their wishes and viewpoints on the planning process and thus have an impact on the development of the area and the action plans ultimately identified for implementation. The visitor survey does not replace other methods of participatory planning, but it is one possible way of achieving participation in addition to other available methods. A visitor survey generally reaches a significantly broader and more representative group of the area’s users than can be reached, for instance, through public programs or focus groups.
The main objectives of the survey were as follows;
• To identify the profile of visitors and the nature of their visits in order to guide the interpretation strategy and implement action plans that meet visitor expectations
• Visitor data will promote sustainable development of recreation areas. Knowing the number of visitors, the geographical distribution of visitors, as well as the type of visitors, is invaluable information for promoting sustainable tourism. Reliable data on visitor characteristics can help to confirm the impacts of tourism on the triple bottom line that is to say the economic, social and environmental impacts of visitors the local area and local communities.
Interpretation of national park and nature reserve can play an important role in the marketing strategy particularly if the local area is steeped in history and culture. Interpretation is much more than providing visitors with information about the area they are visiting: it is about provoking a reaction in the visitor. Interpretation should aim to make a connection with the visitor in some way that is relevant to their own lives. Interpretation
helps to create a ‘sense of place’ or ‘sense of identity’ so that it is clear to the visitor why this site is important in the bigger picture and why it worth protecting and maintaining for future generations. If you can get the ‘sense of identity’ right, it can form part of a powerful marketing image.
I worked closely with the National Park rangers recruiting volunteers in areas that were considered red squirrel strongholds to do siting surveys in local forests to update the Scottish database of red squirrel population. The data collected indicated a growth in certain locations of new red squirrels populations moving in despite the presence of grey squirrels. This was an indication that habitat and food source was plenty for both squirrel species to survive and also that the grey squirrel population in these areas where healthy and were not passing on diseases to the less resilient red squirrels Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park
EUCAN on being a socially and environmentally responsible charitable organisation
- Patterns of loss of biodiversity: Kenya forests
- Deforestation and land use change: Kenya forests
- Distribution patterns of flora and fauna
- Storing and querying large data sets
- Calculating home range and habitat use
- Mapping and modelling spatial phenomena (eg species distributions, deforestation risk etc)
- Working with communities to map resources and land-use
Conservation in Schools Education Programme: Community led nurseries
A reforestation project. Centres in the Mara developed seed banks and tree nurseries accessible to local people. Here seedlings were grown and provided to the community member interested in in promoting the protection and rehabilitation of Kenya’s depleted forest areas.
At RSPB (Royal Society for Protection of Birds) I worked on the “Aren’t Bird Brilliant campaign” , providing visitors information on Scottish Birds of Prey. Live webcams at Visitor Centres on RSBP reserves showed the amazing everyday lives of Osprey, Peregrine Falcon, Barn Owls and wild birds as well as the lovable and protected Red Squirrel.
At La Brenne we worked closely with the National Park staff and LPO (Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux) representatives, the French equivalent of RSPB. The economy is still very much connected to this diverse
Nature Reserve, and La Brenne maintains its cultural heritage by continuing fish farming, shooting of Red and Roe deer, Wild boar, and wildfowl. It was within this vast area of wetland habitat we carried out habitat management to provide suitable habitat for the breeding of whiskered terns. We worked together (with reserve staff and a local group) removing Water Lily rhizomes from the sticky clay area around a lake, where
they were encroaching too much on dragonfly habitat (this by no means an easy feat!). The Water Lilies would be re-planted later that year by LPO staff alongside other lakes in the area to create additional habitat for the terns. The conflicts and the management of the reserve were apparent all around; coypu traps, exterminated musk rats, and wild boar culling. Additionally invasive catfish are eradicated annually from the fish ponds, as they compete with the stocks of carp being farmed for the European Market. www.parc-naturel-brenne.fr/english
- Threat maps i.e dangers to human settlements, poaching activities in the Masai Mara
- Spatial analysis of wildlife census data
- Wildlife sightings were transferred into GIS
- Migration corridors clearly identified
- Wildlife densities mapped in wet and dry season.
- Cluster analysis performed on poaching activities to show hotspots
The Greater Masai Mara Community Scout Programme
The programme in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya was funded by The Darwin Institute for the Survival of the Species and organised by The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent. Some 70% of Kenya's wildlife exists outside protected areas. Its survival depends on tolerance of wildlife and sustainable management of natural resources by the local communities who suffer the costs of living with wildlife. The Maasai communities of the Greater Mara Ecosystem have expressed a desire and willingness to develop their capacity to manage and protect the natural resources among which they live outside the Masai Mara National Reserve (MMNR).
The programme trained Kenyans to research and monitor human-wildlife conflict in the Masai Mara ecosystem, focusing on three main areas: the factors affecting the recovery of the black rhino population, the impact of tourism, and humanelephant conflict. Community based natural resource management for the conservation of Kenya's wildlife, forests, water resources, coral reefs and rangelands are becoming increasingly more critical as these resources are highly threatened.
The purpose of the programme was to empower Maasai communities throughout the greater Mara ecosystem to monitor and protect natural resources and manage humanwildlife conflict, and thereby improve local livelihoods, through the development of a sustainably funded community wildlife scout association. The main aim was local capacity building to monitor and protect biodiversity. The programme helps communities understand the importance of their environment and the resources on which they rely by promoting sustainable conservation based development. The mara is constantly under considerable threat from illegal hunting for the bushmeat trade. The project I was involved in concentrated on anti poaching operations, wildlife monitoring, preventing human wildlife conflict, bush fires and forest destruction. Scouts also served as an outreach function, informing the wider communityon conservation and land management issues.
At this wetland reserve we worked alongside a group of permanent French volunteers. Willow encroaching on reed-bed habitat was removed but was not wasted. A temporary bird hide was constructed by our group from some of the removed willow so that visitors could still enjoy the many birds that came to the reserve whilst a more permanent hide was constructed over the coming seasons. The willow was bound together and
woven into large screens creating a ‘fortress’ from our combined efforts!
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