The Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, will highlight how European agricultural reform could have a major impact on Scottish wildlife when they exhibit at the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh this week.

As part of this year’s ‘Grazing, Bugs and Birds’ theme, the Macaulay Institute will demonstrate that a total removal of grazing livestock will not be beneficial for a healthy balance of wildlife on Scottish hillsides.

Macaulay Institute wildlife ecologist, Dr Peter Dennis said: “Grazing animals, such as sheep and cattle, have had a major influence on shaping our landscape for hundreds of years. EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reforms affecting the way we farm mean that the once common sight of lots of sheep on our hillsides may very soon be a thing of the past. Fewer sheep should help to restore wildlife but a complete loss of sheep and especially cattle may be detrimental to upland biodiversity.”

The huge rise in sheep numbers in previous decades presented a threat through over-grazing, but now some sites face the reverse situation. In many areas sheep numbers have recently started declining, due in part to changes in EU support subsidies. A lack of financial incentive may lead to a complete loss of mixed livestock (sheep and cattle) farming in many upland areas.

Recent research carried out by the Institute and its collaborators has shown that a reduction in grazing regimes to one third of commercial densities is the most beneficial to wildlife – such as the meadow pipit, a widespread upland song bird – because of the mixture of short and tall vegetation patches this grazing management creates. These vegetation patches provide feeding and nesting sites for the birds.

Under these conditions, there are not just more pipits nesting, but they lay eggs that are a third bigger than when there are typical levels of grazing, or no grazing. Bigger eggs generally mean healthier chicks.

Reduced grazing levels also allows a mixture of plant and invertebrate species to flourish – with twice as many invertebrates found compared to areas with typical sheep numbers.

“We need to understand exactly how grazing contributes to the balance of different species if policy makers are to produce farming legislation for the good of both society and wildlife,” said Dr Dennis.

Visitors to the show at Ingliston will find the Macaulay Institute team in the Scottish Agricultural College marquee on the edge of the main ring, where they will be happy to discuss this and other land management issues with visitors, and will also encourage families and children to try their hand at a number of interactive exhibits and activities including ?Pipit Run?, the ?Grazing Puzzle? and the radio tracking of beetles.

Andrew Nolan, head of the Soil Survey and Land Evaluation unit at the Institute’s commercial arm, Macaulay Research Consultancy Services, will also be on hand at the show to talk about the high quality research, consultancy and data services the Institute provides on land and environmental management, to a range of public and private sector customers throughout the world.

Andrew explains: “At the Royal Highland Show we hope to meet and engage with as wide an audience as possible, including existing and potential clients, to promote the range of services the Macaulay Institute can offer them, as well as the relevance of such services in a dynamic and changing Scotland.

“We will be discussing a number of issues at the show,” continues Andrew. “These will include land evaluation, hydrology and water quality, modelling of river catchments and flood risk, landscape planning and visualization, habitat assessment and environmental impact, economic and social issues, and training.”

The Grazing and Upland Birds (GRUB) project has been running since 2002 and is the largest experiment of its type ever attempted.

Comparison of grazing management regimes is being carried out in the Trossachs, at Glen Finglas, 23 miles northwest of Stirling, with the kind permission of The Woodland Trust.

We have established 24 fenced plots and each plot is about the size of five football pitches (3.3 hectares). We have stocked each plot in one of four ways – each with different numbers of sheep and cattle:

Nine sheep per plot – this is standard commercial stocking density Three sheep per plot A mixture of sheep and cattle (but equivalent to three sheep all year round) No sheep or cattle

The work is funded by the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department. Our partners in this project are: Scottish Agricultural College Centre for Ecology and Hydrology RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds) BioSS (Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland) University of Aberdeen University of Exeter in Cornwall

The Macaulay Institute is the premier land use research institute in the UK. Two hundred and seventy staff are based at the Macaulay Institute at Craigiebuckler in Aberdeen. The Macaulay Institute aims to be an international leader in research on the use of rural land resources for the benefit of people and the environment and is involved in research across the globe; from Scotland to Chile and China. More about the Macaulay Institute can be found at www.macaulay.ac.uk

For further information contact: Sally Wallis Tricker PR Tel: 01224 654085/646491 Email:swallis@trickerpr.com