Scotland’s – and Argyll’s – glorious areas of machair, unique wild-flower, herbs and grasslands developed specifically to secure coastal dune systems from wind erosion, are under serious threat from rising sea levels. Found mostly on the islands – but also in some mainland locations, 70% of Scotland’s machair is in the Western Isles.
It is also a feature of Argyll’s islands like, for example, Islay, Colonsay, Iona, Coll and Tiree.
Rising sea levels – resulting from melting glaciers as our climate progressively changes with global warming, are wiping out the machair.
As this is lost, we lose not only these wildflower grasslands and the dune systems they exist to protect but a spectrum of unique wildlife for whom the machair is their only remaining European habitat..
This includes the great yellow bumblebee, the chough, corn bunting, the corncrake and 16,000 breeding pairs of wading birds.
Now the EU’s Life+ Fund has made a grant of £1 million available to a partnership of Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), RSPB and Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles Council) to combat the loss of the machair.
The funding wll pay for machinery, labour and advice to maintain the crofters traditional late harvesting of machair to protect the wildlife it supports.
SNH’s Policy and Advice Manager for Coastal Ecology, Stewart Angus, says ‘Machair owes its existence to the people of the Western Isles and, in conservation terms, is a world class resource. We can’t stop coastal change but we can adapt’.
This strikes a common sense note – in happy contrast to the idiocies of archaeologists after the recent discovery in the seas off Orkney of a prehistoric stone table – a slab of stone with four pillars at the corners below it and set on the remains of what is probably a small settlement.
The scholarly cry went up that this will now provide a unique focus for important research to help us in understanding how, over time, the human race has responded to climate change and rising sea levels.
D’oh! With the exception of Canute (or Cnut) they moved to higher ground. How much research funding does that take?
In defence of Canute -and the origins of my own Christian name – I must point out that Canute knew very well what he was doing when he parked himself facing an incoming tide. He was giving his advisers a practical demonstration that you cannot fight nature.
I hope that the announcement of this funding will mean that proper recognition and protection is now to be given to those crofters who work with the Machair and have preserved a unique marginal land environment over many years. Clearly there is some threat from the sea but a much greater threat exists in some areas from members of the public who misuse the Right to Roam by camping and littering in sensitive areas, ignoring and abusing gates and fencing and disturbing animals and livestock with uncontrolled dogs. On small islands where police and other regulatory presence is not around this presents a very real problem.
On Tiree, with its RET enhanced ferry fares structure, there are additional problems associated with visiting motorists, particularly camper van enthusiasts, destabilising the machair with ill-considered and thoughtless parking. The attraction of the machair, particularly in springtime, is truly marvellous when wild flowers predominate and the ground is rich with pollinating insects and birds. Visitors must be taught that this is a fragile habitat that has built up over centuries and has been nurtured by those who live and work beside it. It can be destroyed by thoughtless action very easily
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