Den box installation with NatureScot
Martens on the Move is delighted to be collaborating with NatureScot in supporting pine marten recovery in Scotland. NatureScot is the ‘lead public body responsible for advising Scottish Ministers on all matters relating to the natural heritage’. Alongside NatureScot staff, Martens on the Move recently installed a pine marten den box at a reserve in southern Scotland
Den boxes provide a safe place for pine martens, which are protected by law and therefore it is an offence to intentionally or recklessly disturb a pine marten in a den.
This new den box will be monitored with a trail camera during the breeding season in spring when pregnant females are looking for a safe place to give birth to their kits and also during the winter when den boxes can provide a snug resting place.
By the beginning of the 20th century, pine martens had almost disappeared from most of Britain due to hunting and woodland clearance, but the main surviving population took refuge in the remote and rocky northwest Highlands of Scotland. At this time, woodland cover in Britain was just 5% of the land. Pine martens had a timely reprieve from intensive persecution during WW1 when many men left the countryside to fight. In the 1920s and 1930s, a few key landowners in northwest Scotland agreed to stop hunting the species, which was also a time when the landscape was slowly being reforested. However, it wasn’t until 1939 that pine martens slowly began to expand beyond their rocky outpost.
In 1988, pine martens gained legal protection in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act (1981) — a pivotal moment in their recovery and conservation. Throughout the second half of the 20th century and early 21st century, pine martens finally managed to slowly repopulate the Highlands.
This northern Scotland population is now the sole viable source of pine martens used for all translocations to the rest of Britain, enabling the ongoing conservation of the species across the three nations. More than 100 pine martens have now been translocated from northern Scotland to southern Scotland, mid-Wales, Gloucestershire, Devon and Cumbria. The first of these translocations to take place in Britain was between 1980-1982, when 12 pine martens were moved from northern Scotland to Galloway Forest in southwest Scotland by the then Forestry Commission (now known as Forestry and Land Scotland). This translocation was followed in the early 2000s by a series of unofficial releases of pine martens by wildlife carers in the Tweed Valley in the Scottish Borders.
Since then, pine marten populations have slowly been expanding across southern Scotland and into northern England and volunteer groups — such as the Dumfries and Galloway Pine Marten Group and the Scottish Borders Pine Marten Group — have been set up by local communities to support the recovery of this native species.
Martens on the Move is now working with volunteers, communities and organisations to improve the landscape for pine martens moving into new areas and to monitor the progress of the species.
The information gained from monitoring den boxes contributes important data to the National Pine Marten Monitoring Programme.