Partner Portrait Laikenbuie, Highland
Laikenbuie lies within the gentle slopes of the Laiken Glen, featuring the Auldearn burn and a rich mosaic of native broadleaf woodland, wetland, scrub and grassland. Up until the 1960s the land was heavily grazed by Shetland ponies, bred for the pit pony trade and later a breeding herd of cattle. In 1984, Peter and Therese Muskus purchased Laikenbuie and ran it as a small-scale, organic farm offering holiday accommodation in tandem with nature recovery.
In January 2023 the Laikenbuie Ecology Trust was formed, a charity responsible for driving the restoration of ecosystem processes to benefit nature and the local community. The Trust’s two main strategic aims are Wilder Nature and Wilder Farming. It will achieve them using rewilding principles to support functioning ecosystems with high levels of biodiversity, while demonstrating how organic farming and nature restoration can work hand-in-hand.
There has been a legacy of moving away from conventional farming at Laikenbuie over the past 30 years, allowing nature to run wild across large areas, making it more adaptable to climatic and environmental pressures.
Laikenbuie boasts a diversity of habitats rarely seen in a modern landscape, including mature broadleaf woodland, gorse-dominated scrub, lowland fen, wetlands and species-rich grassland.
Genevieve and David Tompkins are local ecologists who live on site and work part-time as custodians for the charity. An important part of their work involves baseline habitat and wildlife surveys to help inform decisions made by the charity’s trustees.
Several lochans have been created and these well-established wetlands support a wide range of plants, insects and birds.
Distinctive spikes of horsetail fringe the lochan margins, along with marsh marigolds and naturally regenerating alder and birch saplings.
In early spring these water bodies pulsate with an amorous mass of frogs and toads, and by late May endangered northern damselflies emerge, their iridescent blue bodies dazzling in the sunlight.
Laikenbuie is notable for its impressive array of insects. 14 species of butterflies have been recorded including the vulnerable small pearl-bordered fritillary.
Speckled woods are commonplace in the woodlands, while in the damp grasslands and fens, orange-tip butterflies lay their brightly coloured eggs on lady’s smock - or cuckoo flower.
The many flowering plants are great sources of nectar for hoverflies, wasps and bees, including the solitary orange-legged furrow bee, that excavates its nesting chamber in exposed patches of bare ground.
Invertebrate surveys have revealed many notable records but the regular monitoring of species such as moths is equally important for providing long term insights into insect populations and trends.
Alongside regular field surveys to monitor breeding birds, six Audiomoths have been installed to record birdsong – one each in woodland, scrub and wetland habitat, plus three in control habitats. This data will be analysed by software to pick out the songs and calculate the abundance of the different bird species present.
Monitoring woodcock – a rarely seen species of wader that inhabits damp woodland – involves a vigil at dusk to track them as they fly over their breeding territory, a behaviour known as ‘roding’, which includes strange, frog-like croaking calls.
The woodcock's cryptic brown plumage provides perfect camouflage making them almost impossible to spot on the woodland floor. They are crepuscular in nature (active around dawn and dusk) and sport a large eye to aid their vision at twilight.
A succession of wildflowers begins with wood anemones and bluebells. This continues through summer with several species of orchid, ending in August with knapweed, harebell and devils-bit scabious filling the species-rich grasslands – which also contain the endangered heath cudweed.
While the underlying philosophy is to let nature lead, there is an ambition to actively return missing species to the site, including aspen, which almost certainly used to exist here but has been lost due to overgrazing.
Iron Age pigs act as a proxy for wild boar, a species that would once have been an important component of Scotland’s wild woods. It’s hoped their rootling behaviour will encourage greater levels of biodiversity, as already witnessed with red mason bees collecting mud for nest building, hoverflies laying eggs in wallows, and mice and robins foraging behind the pigs. And their dung is stuffed with beetles!
The Trust is keen for the local community to become more deeply connected to the land here. Its volunteering days and outreach events provide a fun and educational setting where people can learn about ecosystems and our place within them.
There is a focus on engaging with local crisis centres and other such charities and organisations to provide those most in need with a peaceful, quiet place to connect with nature.
As custodians of Laikenbuie, Gen and David are keen to embrace the most up-to-date thinking about ecosystem health and food production. Their aim is to create a place where nature and farming directly support one another, rather than being segregated into ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ zones.
While change is always difficult, there is an opportunity at Laikenbuie to radically alter perceptions of what the word ‘farming’ means, and what it looks like. This will require a shift in the types of livestock raised and the method of husbandry, while remaining productive as a farm.
It is hoped that the involvement of local people will play a part in achieving this transition, and help to fulfil the Trust’s vision for Laikenbuie to be the beating heart of a wilder and healthier Nairnshire.
