Floating artificial island on loch in Glen Affric for black and red throated divers
The image was provided by Alan Stevenson and formed part of a paper written by Alan Stevenson and Alan Mackay in 1991 titled Forestry in the Highland Region. The paper is available on Forestry Memories Picture No 5720
The islands were successfully used by black and red throated divers to overcome the problem of nests being flooded with rising water levels when sited on the edges of the lochs. The construction consisted of polystyrene blocks covered with chicken mesh and hessian sacking, topped by natural soil and vegetation sloped to meet the water edge. Tony Hind, Conservation Forester, for north Scotland certainly constructed and placed a number of these in various forest lochs and lochans in the Highlands and Islands. Can anyone say if it was Tony who came up with the original idea?
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The above paper states that D Merrie was trialling rafts for red-throated divers in the mid-seventies in Argyll.
The idea apparently seems to originate in North America where they were provided for waterfowl in general in the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota in the 1960s and were found to be used by Great Northern Divers.
All this information can be researched by drilling down through references starting in the above.
Thanks for asking the question which prompted this gentle expedition on a quiet evening. Comment left on 21 October 2023 at 22:41 by John Burrow