Category: Wildlife reserves

Natural Connections – From a student's point of view

, by Cumbernauld LL
Emma First on the left My name is Emma Louise McGurk and I am from St. Maurice’s High school in Cumbernauld. I have been involved with Natural Connections since September 2015, we were introduced to Tracy and Liz early on in September and they gave us an idea of what the project was about and what we were going to be doing with them. The following fortnight we took a site visit and we did a risk assessment on the area, this helped us get to know our site better and sum up what we needed to improve in the area of St. Maurice’s Pond. From then on every fortnight we would set out to try and improve our site we carried out activities like litter picking and weed whacking, from the litter picking we managed to get 5 whole bags full with litter and since then the area has very little litter there (we hope for it to stay that way).

Discovering Cumbernauld

, by Cumbernauld LL
I wonder what this smells like? Last Sunday Paul and I took a group of local residents out to Forest Wood Wildlife Reserve for one of our programmed Discover days.  Starting at the Lime Crescent underpass we walked up into the reserve discovering incredibly beautiful woodlands, smoky peaty water trickling in the burns and fascinating ponds just waiting for us to explore them. 

Restoring ancient woodland

, by Cumbernauld LL
Tim Hall, Head of Operations at the Woodland Trust Scotland, takes a journey through Scotland's ancient woodlands and highlights the importance of restoring this incredible habitat. This was recently published in the Scottish Wildlife Trusts, 50 for the Future blog, listing 50 things that they believe should happen in Scotland over the next 50 years to benefit both people and wildlife. 

Celebrating Living Landscapes at Gardening Scotland

, by Cumbernauld LL
The Gardening Scotland Living Landscape team Last weekend Cumbernauld Living Landscape along with the Edinburgh and Coigach-Assynt Living Landscapes had the pleasure of hosting several stalls at Gardening Scotland at the Ingliston Royal Highland Centre.  We were situated in the Living Garden exhibit alongside the wonderful One Planet Picnic Pocket Gardens designed and built by Eco School students throughout Scotland.

Better protection for sensitive sites

, by Cumbernauld LL
  This summer Urban Designer and Landscape Architect Marion Profit completed an internship with the Scottish Wildlife Trust as part of the Cumbernauld Living Landscape partnership. Her interest was how buffer zones can protect sensitive sites as one of the key elements of green infrastructure.

Natural Connections – Learning from others

, by Cumbernauld LL
Lochinver preschooler's identifying their next scavenger hunt item Last week, we had a visit to our sister programme Coigach and Assynth Living Landscape based in Lochinver, Sutherland.  The Coigach and Assynt Living Landscape project covers a vast area of mainly small townships and crofts with a population of 1200, a huge comparison to the Cumbernauld Living Landscape which covers a much smaller area but a larger population of 55,000 plus. 

Natural Connections – A connection with nature

, by Cumbernauld LL
We had a cook out last week for the last Natural Connections workshop for the term with the students of St Maurice’s High School.  The lads instantly took up the primal challenge of cooking outdoors (man vs fire – safely and responsibly!) to supply the other students with amazing bacon butties.  We were surrounded by a sea of smiles as the students, in the pouring rain with a cup of tea in one hand and butties in the other got stuck in. 

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