Nature Restoration: Drones and Deer in the Scottish Highlands

Arkaig Community Forest (ACF) and Woodland Trust Scotland (WTS) are joint owners of Loch Arkaig Pine Forest, which encompasses more than 1000 hectares. We have been operating within this unique partnership since 2016. We aim to restore this important Caledonian pine forest within the temperate rainforest , which once dominated the southern shores of the 12-mile-long Loch Arkaig, while ensuring the land is managed to the benefit of the community and future generations. 

The partnership underpins our ability to have a significant impact on all of our project goals. We have recently expanded our collaboration to work with surrounding landowners, Achnacarry Estate and Forestry & Land Scotland, to form a landscape-scale partnership seeking to restore 30,000 hectares in the Beò Airceig initiative.

Since its inception, ACF has grown significantly, supporting local employment with a team of five staff members, a dedicated board of trustees, and committed volunteers from within the community and beyond. Our day-to-day operations contribute to our efforts to restore the land, with the long-term goal of restoring the Caledonian pine forest while supporting sustainable jobs and resources for the local community. Where possible, we use local contractors for facilities maintenance, harvesting operations and ecological surveys.

ACF owns and operates a Community Deer Larder and Tree Nursery, and has a small meeting space alongside our land holdings. In addition, we host regular volunteer events centred on practical, hands-on conservation . In the future, we plan to provide further skills and education training to the local community.

Across Scotland, land fragmentation, invasive species, and high deer densities have suppressed natural regeneration , leading to the current loss of biodiversity characterised by ageing forest remnants and bare hillsides. In 2025, thanks to our team of motivated contractors and aided by fencing, deer densities on our land holdings in the Glen Mallie and Gusach (Gaelic for ‘pinewood’) sites reached our target levels of less than 2.5 deer/km2. Deer numbers are monitored through thermal drone surveys, which provide a more accurate and less intrusive count. This also allows us to monitor the number of feral pigs (or wild boar) present on the land alongside the deer. Drone surveys and animal numbers are supplemented by monthly on-the-ground fence checks. Both ACF and WTS also use trail cameras in locations of interest to monitor and provide community educational opportunities. The most famous monitoring camera among these is the live feed of the Ospreys! 

Away from the hill and back at the Clunes Community Larder, the deer are processed, providing low-carbon, locally sourced venison, which is available to the community as well as local markets and restaurants in Lochaber. The sales provide income to subsidise the facility and staffing costs as well as reinvestment in the project. 

Drone use is not limited to deer counts, however. In April 2025, our WTS partners trialled ‘Direct Drone Seeding’, which involved dropping 500,000 Birch and Scots Pine seeds on the hill, as a supplementary measure to support natural regeneration in an area of the land where native seed-bearing trees would struggle to produce sufficient quantities to regenerate the land. The results of this will not be visible for some time, so the programme’s success is yet to be measured. While this was still resource-intensive, it was considerably less so than proceeding by hand or with a crew of excavators. We are also using long-term high-resolution drone mapping to track the changes after non-native conifer removal and peatland restoration on 20 hectares of ACF land.