27th March 2025, by Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape

The 5-year Coigach & Assynt Living Landscape Partnership Scheme – supported though the National Lottery Heritage Fund and a range of other funders – officially ended in September 2021. But the CALL partnership itself existed before the Landscape Partnership Scheme, and it has continued since.

Towards the end of the Landscape Partnership Scheme, Partners discussed options for taking forward the 40-year Vision for this spectacular landscape. Those involved directly in land management – including community, private and eNGO landowners, as well as community organisations – agreed to continue an active partnership. We created a new Memorandum of Cooperation, refreshed our Vision and Values, and have kept working together since.

Representatives of the partners meet online bi-monthly to share news and opportunities; perspectives on common challenges; find new ways to work together and – crucially – nurture the trusting links that make this partnership so special.

Twice a year we break from the screen and meet in-person for a longer meeting to focus on a particular theme, often with an external speaker or field visit to inspire us. We have heard about the Project Laxford salmon project, and deer management at Reay Forest Estate; ecological monitoring on the Wildland Estates and, on a suitably soggy day, had a wonder-full wander in the rainforest with Assynt Field Club at Torbreck.

 

Examples of our recent collaboration include:

• The Thermal Drone survey conducted across the whole CALL area in miraculously perfect conditions in September 2024: thought to be the largest of its kind ever conducted. This was accompanied by research into the potential for a Community Deer Management Initiative in the area. Scottish Wildlife Trust managed funding from the Nature Restoration Fund to support this work.

• Two education programmes with local schools are taking place in the summer term:
  • The P7 Transition programme will support primary school children moving to Ullapool High School, through a series of outdoor learning days – connecting to nature and to each other.
  • The Hill to Grill programme introduces High School students to deer management and venison, from experience on the hill and in the larder, to designing, marketing and cooking their own venison burger.

  The North West Highlands Geopark are leading this programme, supported by organisations and individuals from across the CALL partnership.

• Wild fires present a significant threat to our precious, slowly regenerating habitats. It can often take hours for the professional services to reach a fire in a remote area. CALL have developed a collaborative plan for partners – and others across the area – to support each other when a fire breaks out. This may be simply alerting each other to ensure everyone is safe, or mobilising fire fighting equipment and human-power from one estate to another. We are working with Scottish Fire & Rescue Service to ensure all approaches are safe and in-line with professional protocols.
• Invasive American Mink have long been a threat to native wildlife, and local poultry. After a particularly shocking discovery of multiple storm petrels predated by mink on one of the Summer Isles, the CALL partnership has helped form a working group to control this invasion; read more here.

• The group submitted a stage one application to the Endangered Landscapes Programme; we have not been selected this time, but we understand that the fund is highly competitive, and we will continue to seek other opportunities to achieve our Vision.

When CALL was established in 2010 it was at the vanguard of cross-sectoral partnership working. 15 years on, this approach is becoming much more commonplace: this is a very positive evolution for achieving meaningful change at this critical time of climate and biodiversity crises.

CALL remains a powerful entity: embedded in the communities of place; with respectful relationships between the partners, and the power to make a difference in this precious landscape: for the good of nature and people.

 

-Lizzie Williams, Coigach and Assynt Living Landscape group coordinator