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A wild idea!

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
A chance comment overheard in a shop, and a forager’s wry joke, should give us hope for the future. ‘It feels like rain’s coming – I can sense a change on its way’, said the Cumbernauld shop assistant I eavesdropped on. ‘I’m picking my dinner’, quipped the brambler I passed on a walk. But what they said sounded to me…

The sea starts here

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
According to a Scottish Government report last year, an estimated 300 million plastic straws, 276 million pieces of plastic cutlery, 50 million plastic plates and 66 million polystyrene food containers are used in Scotland every year. With a population of around 50,000, that means that here in Cumbernauld we are using three million straws a year, 2,760,000 pieces of plastic…

Wild can be beautiful

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
Cumbernauld Living Landscape won two of Keep Scotland Beautiful’s Beautiful Scotland Awards recently, a Silver Gilt overall, and the special Garden for Life Award. We were of course delighted, not only for ourselves, but for the many local people and organisations whose hard work and dedication made it all possible. But we were also delighted on another level, because the…

Discovering Cumbernauld’s magical Green Route

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
This month Cumbernauld Living Landscape teamed up with Rowanbank Environmental Arts and Education to deliver an enchanting walking theatre along the Green Route that connects Cumbernauld’s urban centre, through the communities of Carbrain, Kildrum and Abronhill, to the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Cumbernauld Glen Wildlife Reserve. Rowanbank is a troupe of highly skilled musicians, dancers, stilt walkers and aerialists who were…

Could pine martens help paint the town red?

, by Paul Barclay
These days most of us are probably aware of the plight of the red squirrel. Reds are our only native squirrel but numbers have been in steady decline for years, due to the spread of their invasive grey cousins. Red squirrels find it difficult to compete with greys for food and habitat, but it is the squirrelpox virus which the…

Why Cumbernauld is a cool place to live

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
  Many of us know that the fantastic woodlands and greenspaces around Cumbernauld make it a cool place to live. But did you know that they actually make it cooler too? All the concrete and tarmac in towns and cities mean that they get hotter than rural areas, because the dark, hard surfaces absorb lots of heat. But studies have…

Tenders invited for new interpretation for Cumbernauld greenspaces

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
  As part of Cumbernauld Living Landscape’s aim to help people to get the most out of the wonderful green spaces on our doorstep, we are planning to install some new interpretation. This is what we want the interpretation to achieve: The interpretation gives people the knowledge and confidence to explore Cumbernauld, including Wildlife Trust reserves, Council-owned sites, and a…

Tackling the invaders

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
What do buddleia, rhododendron, stoats, grey squirrels and snowberry have in common? They are all beautiful and fascinating species of animals and plants that can wreak havoc on other local wildlife if they turn up in the wrong place. Then they’re called invasive non-native species (INNS), and they’re just a few of the 3000 or so that we now have…

The sounds of the wild seasons

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
If wild geese provide the soundtrack to winter walks, the warblers to the spring, and the screaming swifts are our summer music, then it is the incessant piping of young buzzards that sometimes fill these not-quite-summer, not-quite autumn days. In truth the adult buzzards have been calling to one another most of the year – only falling silent in the…

Evolution works in mysterious ways!

, by Cumbernauld Living Landscape
If Creationists wanted to cite an animal that seems to defy the theories of evolution, they should look no further than the common cranefly, Tipula paludosa. Every year as summer fades a rag-tag invasion of daddy-longlegs stumbles into homes all over the country, crashing into lampshades, dangling helplessly from undusted cobwebs, and wilfully drowning themselves in washing-up bowls and tea cups.…

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