Volunteering
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We are not planning any formal volunteering days at the moment as we undergo a re-organisation, but if you are interested, please do make contact and we can organise something around your interests and skills. For example, it would be useful to have someone interested in looking after two trail cameras for a while. It would involve looking around the site, choosing interesting positions to set the cameras, and coming back every week or two to change the SD card and check the batteries. Recently I captured a video of a wild boar which has not been seen/reported in this part of Nairnshire. I actually set out to see what deer were using this part of our land. See the video Views from the Riverbank on our homepage to see what can be achieved with a trail camera here.
We hope to run formal volunteering days in the future. In the past, they were usually run on a Friday or Saturday from 10am – 4pm about once a month. Please read the 2025 summary below to get a feel for the wide variety of jobs covered. If you would like to help, or if you have a specialist skill that you would like to use in a voluntary capacity to help the Trust please contact us via email. We will then add you to our mailing list and contact you whenever a volunteering day is planned.
Next volunteering days 10am – 4pm.
Please read the paragraph above.
Important: these may change at short notice, so please join our mailing list.
A summary of volunteering days in 2025.
We just want to thank you all for your efforts volunteering at Laikenbuie this year. Whether you’ve come to every work party, only one or are hoping to join us for the first time next year, we really appreciate your support and hard work.
There’s been some big steps forward taken by the charity this year. The Iron Age pigs arrived back in Spring and have since been shaping the landscape here. We’ve had some interesting responses by nature to the pigs already, with IUCN Vulnerable Corn Spurrey popping up where the pigs have been (usually described as an arable specialist, this annual plant relies on ground disturbance for seed germination) and the Red Mason Bee recorded for the first time on the site, collecting mud for its nest from pig rootling areas. We’ve also begun our programme of damming the historic ditches at Laikenbuie, restoring our wetlands, and re-introduced Aspen to the site.
Our volunteers have been central to much of our progress this year. Together, you have:
- Removed more than 40 old tree tubes from the Eastern Woods, plus around 60 metres of old plastic water pipe removed from the Auldearn Burn.
- Restored areas of collapsed dry stone wall.
- Removed nearly 100 non-native invasive cotoneaster plants.
- Created three leaky dams along the historic drains, beginning to restore our wetlands
- Scythed and raked four patches in our tall-herb fen, introducing greater structural diversity to the wetland.
- Created an experimental sheep’s wool and Bracken compost heap.
- Erected two chestnut paling exclosures to protect re-introduced Aspen saplings.
- Cut several large pockets into areas of Gorse scrub, increasing the structural diversity of our scrubland in the way that Bison and other large mammals would have done in the past.
- Cleared one bee nesting bank of Gorse, opening up the area for solitary bees and wasps to nest and other insects the bask.
- Helped with twice daily checks on the pigs and moving the pigs into new areas.
- Helped with camera trap deployment and collection
- Carried out bee and butterfly survey transects
- Taken part in bird ringing sessions
- Consumed nearly 100 cups of tea/ coffee and slices of Dave’s marvellous cake/ burnt biscuits.
The aims of the Laikenbuie Ecology Trust are for landscape rewilding and small-scale, organic agriculture to work in synergy, enabling a diversity of plants and animals. Your kind donations of time and effort are vital in helping us to achieve this.
Together, 17 of you have given us 264 hours of time. Thank you.
