Nature's warriors: stepping up to tackle Scotland's invasive species

Curious about how volunteers are making a massive difference in the fight against invasive species in Scotland? In the second episode of our two-part series, we speak with Jane Hamilton, Volunteer and Communications Officer for the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative. She shares insights into how a powerful collaboration of landowners, organisations, and community members is tackling invasive non-native species like mink, giant hogweed, and Japanese knotweed.

We also hear from some of the dedicated and inspiring volunteers - Peter Howell, Calum McRoberts, Joe Martin, and Mike Baillie - who are on the front line of invasive species control. They reveal the range of methods used to manage these species and share what drives them to volunteer for this cause.

Jane explains how everyone can get involved, whether you're a seasoned volunteer or just curious about helping out. Listen in to discover how you can make a real impact, connect with a supportive volunteer network, and help protect Scotland's nature for future generations.

More information:

Scottish Invasive Species Initiative
NatureScot: Invasive non-native species information
GB Non-native Species Secretariat
Report a non-native species

Transcript:

Kirstin:  

Hi and welcome to Make Space for Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature, landscapes and species. I'm Kirstin Guthrie, and in each episode I'll be joined by inspiring guests who share their expertise and passion for the natural world. In this episode, the second in our series on the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative, I travel around Perthshire to meet some of the volunteers crucial to the success of the project. They work together with SISI team member Mark, one of our many project officers across the northeast of Scotland, to help manage species like mink and giant hogweed. They share how volunteering improves the local area, protects wildlife, and also enhances their own physical and mental well-being. But first, I meet Jane Hamilton, the project's Volunteer and Communications Officer, who explains more about the project, the importance of volunteers, and how everyone can play a vital role in helping nature thrive. 

Hi, Jane, welcome to the podcast. Can you give us just a bit of background about the project, please?

Jane: 

Yeah, absolutely, Kirstin. Great to be here today. Thanks for having us. The Scottish Invasive Species Initiative is a partnership project working to tackle invasive non-native species along rivers and water courses in Northern Scotland. And we take a community-based approach to this, working with volunteers, landowners, organisations, and community groups as well to tackle invasive species in a systematic and strategic way. We cover 43 river catchments in total, which altogether makes up over a third of mainland Scotland. So it is a significant area and a landscape scale project, which means a collaborative approach is essential to be able to work on this scale.

Kirstin:  

Great. And I imagine in your role, you'll meet many volunteers involved with the project. So can you tell us just a little bit about who are these volunteers and groups, and how do you actually get them to come on board?

Jane: 

Yeah, absolutely. So first thing to say is that we consider anyone who contributes their time to the project to be a volunteer. Because we work along river catchments, there's a lot of different stakeholders involved and one of the main groups would be landowners, land managers, and their employees as well, of course. We work with a lot of gamekeepers, ghillies, and groundskeepers who are able to incorporate invasive species work into their daily routine, essentially. These are people who have a lot of knowledge and familiarity with land and with wildlife, so they bring really valuable skills and experience to the project. In the long term, in our plant control project, we aim to hand over management of control sites back to landowners and land managers, but first helping them to get infestations under control and providing training, equipment, and advice, which helps to remove barriers, which would normally prevent people from working on these problematic species.

Kirstin: 

Great, and there's also a lot of organisations involved in the work as well. 

Jane: 

Yes, absolutely. So as well as the private landowners, we also work with organisations and charities, such as the Scottish Wildlife Trust, the National Trust for Scotland, the RSPB, NatureScot itself, and also local councils. And similarly to other land managers, we would look to equip staff in these organisations with the skills, experience, and any training required to manage the species that we target on their own land. So for example, here in Tayside, we've been working with the Scottish Wildlife Trust to remove American skunk cabbage from the Tummel Shingle Islands which is quite a rare freshwater shingle habitat near Pitlochry. And we've also worked with the National Trust for Scotland to remove Japanese knotweed from riverbanks in Dunkeld. And now that the knotweed has been removed from those sites, NTS have been planting trees in its place on the control sites. So that's really fantastic to see and we're really happy with the progress we've been making here. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant, so lots of partner work going on as well. So vital to the project and with the community groups getting involved as well. Who are these people and how do they get involved? 

Jane: 

Yes, so we also work with a lot of community groups who are really keen to take on these challenges and take ownership of their local environment. For example, we work with Green Hive up in Nairn, and this is a community hub promoting sustainability and environmental solutions. And we're working together to control giant hogweed and Himalayan balsam along the River Nairn and around the town of Nairn as well. We've also got a lot of self-organised community groups tackling Himalayan balsam. For example, we've got the Beauly Balsam Bashers, and they're working to remove Himalayan balsam around Beauly town in the Highlands. And there's a couple of others dotted around the country as well. Here in Tayside, we've been working with members of the Upper Tay Paths group around Aberfeldy, and we'll be hearing from them later on. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant, I love that. Balsam Bashers, that's a group I'd be keen to get, be a member of. And what about the general public? Because they are often the people who perhaps are out walking, and they may see some invasive species, do they just contact you directly or how do they get involved? 

Jane: 

Absolutely. People get involved in all kinds of different ways. You can sign up on our website. We also sometimes find people just see that we're out and about and they get chatting to us and get involved in that way. Some people find out about us through our local fishery trust. So there's a lot of different ways to hear from us. We've got a lot of members of the public who sign up to volunteer and essentially just join us in their free time. We've got hundreds of people that come with us every year, both on the plant control project and the mink control project. And there's a lot of really dedicated people who join us year after year contributing hundreds of hours over the course of their volunteering. A lot of these folks are people who just have a bit of spare time and they're really keen to get involved in something positive, contributing to their local environment, their local community. We also get students and folk either early in their careers or looking to change careers and gain a little bit of experience and maybe a little bit of training as well. So we aim to accommodate all kinds of folk from all different backgrounds and motivations and with different abilities as well. You don't need any experience to get involved. So if you're interested do get in touch. 

Kirstin: 

That's great there is a real variety of groups and people involved. So what kind of things do these people do when they're volunteering with the project? It must be really varied, depending on the species. 

Jane: 

Absolutely. There's two main ways that volunteers can get involved. If we're looking at members of the public who are interested in signing up with us, they could either join on our invasive plant project or on our American mink control project. Volunteers helping on the invasive plant project will join one of our project officers or a partner staff for the day, and we'll go to a local river where we will tackle a target species on one of our control sites. And this would either be giant hogweed, Japanese knotweed, Himalayan balsam, or American skunk cabbage. For many of these plants, chemical treatment is the most effective control method, as I think Callum discussed in our previous episode. So, to do this, volunteers will get suited up in spray suits and wellies and gloves and they will spray the plants either using a backpack sprayer, or they will use a stem injector, which injects the chemical directly into the plant and minimises any off target application. And this is the most effective way to deal with these really tricky species to remove. This can be quite physical work, but we find that people tend to find it really rewarding as you can see major progress over time in their local area, and that's really fantastic to see. As an alternative you could also join us for a balsam bashing day. Himalayan balsam is a slightly easier plant to remove because you can just pull it up by the roots, so it's a lot easier to do. And that's a great way for folk to get involved for the first time or as a larger group. 

Kirstin: 

And what about American mink? What's involved there?

Jane: 

Yes, of course, so that's the second way that folks can get involved. The mink project works a little bit differently. Mink are the only animal species that we deal with, and it's a very different ballgame to plants. So volunteers will adopt a floating mink raft, which has a clay pad hidden away inside a tunnel. And because mink are very curious, when they come across this equipment in their natural environment, they'll explore the raft, and they'll leave little tracks on the clay, and we can then identify that mink are in the area. So once we know that mink are around, we can then switch the raft into trapping mode, and we'll place a live capture trap on the raft which needs to be checked every 24 hours. So however, we're increasingly making use of the remote monitoring devices, which automatically send an alert when a trap is triggered, and these allow us to trap more regularly than we've been able to do in the past and essentially increase our trapping success and our success in the project. If a volunteer then catches the mink they will get in touch with a staff member who will humanely dispatch the animal. And we only ever use live capture traps because that means that any bycatch can be released unharmed. We tend not to get a huge amount of bycatch because we design the equipment to minimise interest to other animals except the mink. But we do occasionally get other things, like earlier this week we had a couple of red squirrels in Tayside which were very quickly released and went off on their way. 

Kirstin: 

That's good to hear. That's great. It really is impressive and varied work, and there's such dedication from everyone involved. What would it mean for the project if these people were not able to volunteer their time? 

Jane: 

Volunteers make an absolutely huge difference, and we're really appreciative of all their contributions. On the mink project, for example, we've got hundreds of volunteers operating rafts across the country, and it just wouldn't be possible to do this with using only staff. Currently we've got about 280 active volunteers on the Mink Control Network and collectively they monitor over 200 rafts and over 270 active traps. So that gives you some kind of idea of the scale that we're operating on. And Volunteer contributions to the plant project are equally substantial. Since the project began, volunteers have contributed over 24,000 hours to the invasive plant control project. And when you combine that with the mink project as well, volunteers have contributed almost 140,000 hours since the project began in 2018, which is actually equivalent to 94 full time employees for a year. So that gives you some kind of idea of the scale of volunteer contributions to this. It's really substantial and impressive, and we're really appreciative of everyone who's given up their time over the years to help us. 

Kirstin: 

I think when you put it into a full time equivalent, 94 full time employees for a year, it is just phenomenal, the amount of work that goes on. And it's a two-way thing. Obviously the volunteers do lots, a huge amount of work for the project, but they must get something out of it too. And I'll be asking the volunteers later, specifically what they individually get from volunteering, but what positives do you see and hear from them?

Jane: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think volunteers join us for a variety of reasons and get a lot of different things from the experience. Many people say that they enjoy the opportunity to get outside and get connected in nature, maybe in a slightly different way than they normally do. There's also the chance to meet new people, make new friends, and get some exercise while doing something really useful. And there's a lot of, I think, associated mental health benefits to that as well. There's also the opportunity to learn new skills, gain some experience. We've had 228 volunteers gain formal training qualifications with us over the years and that can be really helpful for folks if they're just trying to get more, a bit more experience and skills. But overall, I think people mostly tell us that they get a lot of satisfaction from doing something worthwhile and feeling like they're making a long-term difference, both for their environment and for their local community. 

Kirstin: 

That's great. You actually provide formal training courses as well, and I think it could be chemical application, first aid courses, it really does vary, doesn't it? And so it's great because not only is volunteering great for your health and being, but it can also be good for CVs so there’s many benefits. So thank you so much for highlighting these. It's been really great to speak to you, Jane. Thank you for joining us. 

Jane:

Thank you so much for having us. 

Kirstin:

So I've now headed out to hear from some of the volunteers involved with the project. First up is Peter Howell, who's been helping to control giant hogweed.

So hi Peter, nice to meet you. Now I know you're also chair of the Upper Tay Paths group. Can you tell us about this group and how this links in with the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative, also known as SISI for short?

Peter: 

Sure, yeah, we are a group of volunteers, we're centred around Aberfeldy and we look after the core path network in the Upper Tay area, so that's really between Logierait or Ballinluig up to Kenmore on Loch Tay, so within that area there's about just under 100 miles of core paths, so we keep an eye on those, we do any maintenance, we look after the signposting, do bridge repairs, that sort of thing, but most of it is cutting back and dealing with the undergrowth. 

So we got involved with the Scottish Invasive Species Initiative, or SISI, about three or four years ago. I had a chat with Mark and it was something very, a lot of us were very keen to do actually, particularly for giant hogweed control, because with the river flowing through the whole area we have a lot of people doing water sports canoeing, kayaking, and so on. And I'd heard about somebody down in Glasgow, actually, who was fairly young and had to come out of their kayak and get out of the riverbank. And unfortunately, there was a lot of giant hogweed growing on the riverbank, and they'd really done a lot of damage to their hands by getting hold of it and using it to pull them out. We thought, as we've got so many water sports people here, it'd be really great just to get on top of it and really focus on the giant hogweed and then the Japanese knotweed as well. Mark trained us up, we've now got six volunteers who are all trained to, to spray where we need to, and we've really taken it from there.

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. You're certainly very busy. And so as you say, the focus here tends to be on giant hogweed. So you've said that it can be dangerous to humans and what other issues does this plant cause? 

Peter: 

It's really the sort of harm to people that is the main problem because by touching the plants, people can really damage their skin. Even a brief contact enough to make them very sensitive to light, they get blistering on their hands, blistering on their skin. So it's really nasty stuff. And the thing is when we, the spraying we do we spot spraying individual plants. We don't go out and spray large areas, but we just deal with individual plants. And the glyphosate or the Roundup, which we use for spraying is really effective at killing it. With one good spraying, then that pretty much knocks it back. What we try and do is get to the plants before they get too big, because they live a sort of three or four year cycle. And the thing we really have to do is control them and get to them before they go to flower. Because once they flowered, then you get hundreds of seeds coming off them, and then you get a whole new sort of population of plants growing from that. So we're very keen to get out while they're young and get rid of them really.

Kirstin: 

Yeah, and the giant hogweed, it’s relatively easy to identify. I think it looks like a huge cow parsley. So once it's been spotted, what do you do? To help control it, spraying is as much of the work, is it? 

Peter: 

It is really all spraying, yes. Well if it's next to or on a path itself, we sometimes have to mark it just to let people know it's there and to keep away from it, because we have to have the right weather to be able to spray. So that's one of the great things about doing the spraying is we can only do it on dry, sunny, windless days. So it's a brilliant thing, but we yes, we'll mark the plants if we have to, but really come and spray them as soon as we can just to make sure that they're knocked down from that point on. And it really takes from when we've sprayed them, it takes them about a couple of weeks to almost disappear and we just keep an eye on them. And if we need to we'll go back and respray them. 

Kirstin: 

Ok brilliant and do you need any skills, knowledge, equipment to help out? And is there any support provided at all?

Peter: 

Yes, absolutely. You need to be able to identify the plants first of all. And the training which we've all done was great actually. It was two weekends. We have a sort of weekend of theory and then a weekend of practical training using the spraying equipment. So it was really very good. Yeah, you've got to be careful because glyphosate or Roundup is you have to treat it with respect for a chemical and make sure we're properly protected from it and also from the plants themselves, because one of the things is we're quite often walking very close to the plants and you have to make sure that we don't touch them ourselves. We take precautions for that. We are very dependent actually on SISI for providing lots of things to us. Actually they provided the training, they provided the sprayers, they provided the PPE, the equipment and everything that we use to protect ourselves. And of course the chemical. And then we report the amount of chemical that we've used and SISI put that together and keep control of everything we do. 

Kirstin: 

Great. And what's the best thing about volunteering from your perspective? 

Peter: 

It's great actually. As I say, it's nice to be able to get out and make a difference to where we live. Everything we do as a group is around trying to encourage public access onto the path network. So controlling invasive species and the sort of the harmful ones in particular, is a really important part of that. So it makes you feel you've made a difference because, you could, lots of people on these paths, they're hopefully enjoying themselves and whether they're walking or cycling or on horse or whatever, then it's really good just to be able to see people out and making the most of the countryside.

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. Thank you so much for speaking to us, Peter. It was lovely to meet you. 

Peter: 

Thanks very much, Kirstin. 

Kirstin: 

So next up I'm in Meikleour, a beautiful Perthshire spot well known for having the tallest and longest beech hedge in the world. And I'm here to meet Calum McRoberts, Head Ghillie at Meikleour Fishings on the River Tay. So hi Calum, firstly can you tell our listeners about your day to day job you do here on the river? 

Calum: 

Hello there, my main responsibility on a day-to-day basis is looking after the guests who come from all over the world to try and catch salmon on the River Tay. Out with that, we also take responsibility for looking after the riverbanks, and whether that's cutting grass in season and dealing with invasive species, that could be plants or also mink, whichever ones most people will know about. 

Kirstin: 

Great, and you've come across quite a few problematic non-native invasive species here, namely Japanese knotweed and mink. As you just mentioned mink, tell us about the different problems these species cause. 

Calum: 

We've had mink here for a long time, but they first came to my attention maybe 10 years ago now, when I was working When we were fishing, and I saw a mink climbing up this bank and going in and out of a kingfisher's nest. Time after time and bringing out these young kingfisher chicks. And that was when I thought I needed to just try and find out more about them and what we can do about them. And we started trapping them on the river quite successfully. They weren't just all that hard to catch. But of course, it's a huge system, so you get rid of some and more come into the territory pretty quickly. Yeah, they're a nuisance to our native wildlife. We do what we can to deal with them. 

Kirstin: 

And Japanese knotweed, what kind of problems does that plant cause for you? 

Calum: 

So again, as a non-native species, it tends to crowd out our native species which can't flourish underneath it. We're quite lucky here, we don't have a huge amount to deal with, whether it's spraying them or injecting them, for a number of years, and we've got success, we're on top of it. We've got a very small patch left now but of course when you're down the system you've got other places above you and so you're always at it because the seeds of these plants can travel down the river. So you always have to be on your guard and looking out for new colonies of the plant. 

Kirstin: 

And it is notoriously hard to get rid of I suppose. And mink, what, how do you actually catch the mink? Have you got traps or how does that work? 

Calum: 

Yes, we use live traps on the River Tay because we've got native species that we don't want to catch, we've got otters, we've also got pine martins which go into the trap sometimes. So it's live traps, so they can be on land beside any sort of water course, or they could be on floating rafts as well. Mink are very inquisitive, so they love to poke around and investigate when they see things. We don't bait the traps at all, unless you use very fresh bait, it can actually deter mink from going inside the traps. So we just generally have the trap. We cover the trap in stones or sticks to make it look like a tunnel. And then their natural curiosity makes them go inside the trap.

Kirstin: 

And anything you do catch that's not mink, obviously you, you release as well. 

Calum: 

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Kirstin: 

Absolutely. And what difference does this work make to your own job near the local area and the wildlife here? 

Calum: 

Wildlife is really important on the River Tay, so as well as fishermen, we get people coming to visit the river to see the native wildlife. And I already mentioned the kingfishers, and mink will, they’re opportunistic feeders, they will take anything from frogs to newts to small birds to fish, you name it, they'll have a go at it. Despite their diminutive size, they're not afraid to tackle anything at all. So we just try and do our bit for the native wildlife by staying on top of them.

Kirstin: 

Excellent. And why do you yourself, Calum, why do you choose to volunteer? 

Calum: 

Because it can make a difference for sure, it really can. We've had terrific help from the Invasive Species Initiative, both in terms of expertise and equipment. But we see the difference, and I've talked about kingfishers a lot, because everybody loves to see kingfishers, but we've now got three active pairs on the estate, and you see the birds, and you know when they're nesting, you see the young, and mink can cope or deal with kingfishers very easily. So it's to know you're making a difference for those species that I do it, and it's actually quite easy to make a difference as well with these things. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us today, Calum. It was lovely to meet you. 

Calum: 

Pleasure, you too. 

Kirstin: 

So I'm now in Perth near the Bertha Park development on the outskirts of the city next to the River Almond and I'm here to meet with volunteer Joe Martin, who's been helping with the control of various non-native invasive plants. 

So hi Joe, welcome to the podcast. So how did you get involved with this project? 

Joe: 

Hi Kirstin. I moved to Perth a number of years ago and I have family who live down near Bertha Park. And as I was walking home many evenings, I used to see the amount of Japanese knotweed and giant hogweed that was growing along the Almond. And I always used to think, somebody needs to do something about that. And at the back end of last year, I saw something on social media where they were looking for volunteers. And that was when I first discovered SISI. So I got in touch, they then introduced me to what the plans were, and asked me if I'd be interested.

Kirstin: 

Brilliant, and how did you know what the plants look like? How could you identify them? 

Joe: 

If I'm honest, I didn't. They were just big and I knew they were a problem. So I used to look, and what I now know is giant hogweed. I saw masses of it. I knew it was a problem. I guessed what it was, but I wouldn't have been able to tell until I met with Mark who leads, who's the project leader in terms of the SISI project. And he was very good at educating us about it. And then after we met with him, he inquired if some of the volunteers would be interested in doing some training, which we embarked on, and that gives you a much better knowledge of what you're doing, what you're letting yourself in for, and also the health and safety aspects of it so that you're not endangering yourself.

Kirstin: 

Great, no that's brilliant. And, tell us about the work you carry out, because there's obviously a variety of plants here, so how do you control each one and, is it different methods for different plants? 

Joe: 

Indeed, yes there are. The main plants that we have dealt with within our area have been giant hogweed and Japanese knotweed. The giant hogweed, most people will have heard of before, and that's the one whereby if you get any of the sap onto your skin, it can be a problem. So the giant hogweed, we stay away from, but we spray it, and that's how it's controlled. With the Japanese knotweed we can inject that. That's a lot easier to control. But literally we, I wouldn't say we go mob handed, but we'll get a team of four to six of us. We'll walk up and down the riverbank. We'll identify the plants that we want to tackle, and we'll spray them. 

Kirstin: 

Yeah, that's great. So it's a total team, teamwork, which is excellent. And, I've personally seen the before and after results firsthand. As I, I often walk along the Almond and it's impressive, but it's hard work. How do you keep on top of these plants to ensure they don't return? And I suppose if they do return, what happens next?

Joe: 

I think that's where Mark, our project leader, kicks in. Because he has got a map of the area, he keeps an eye and a record on what we have sprayed, when it's growing, keeps an eye on what progress we've made in terms of controlling it, and we come back year after year just to see, because the first time we spray we'll kill off some of the hogweed, not all of it, and it will come back. So if we maintain a regular spraying process, we can keep on top of it from there. But it's very much controlled by our leader, Mark, he's a good man. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. And why, so why do you think it's important that the work carries on? What's so important about it? 

Joe: 

I think as I get older and more mature, perhaps as I get towards retirement, I realise we need to look after our environment for our kids.

Yeah, we need to leave something behind. If we ignore this and leave it, it could take over the entire riverbank, and that in itself is poor. But, by letting the invasive species take over, it's shoving out our own native species. And that's something that I'm becoming increasingly aware of. And I can moan about it or I can do something about it. 

Kirstin: 

Yep, absolutely. And, what would you say to our listeners if they're perhaps thinking about volunteering? What do you get from it personally? What do you get, what do you enjoy the most? 

Joe: 

I enjoy being out in the fresh air. I enjoy being away from my desk at work. There's not a huge amount of pressure walking along the riverbanks spraying Japanese knotweed. You have a bit of a chat, you don't come out and spray when the weather's bad. So you're walking along the riverbank, having, controlling something that shouldn't be there, and having some social interaction with a number of different volunteers. It's good fun, it's fresh air. I would recommend anyone give it a go. 

Kirstin: 

Brilliant. Thank you so much Joe. It was great chatting to you today. And all the best. 

Joe: 

Likewise, Kirstin. Thank you very much . 

Kirstin: 

So I've headed out to Stanley and you can probably hear the river in the background here. It is a beautiful day. So we're just close to Perth and we're meeting Mike Baillie, who also volunteers but not so much with plant control. He's actually focused on mink control. So hi Mike. Welcome to the podcast. And you actually became involved with the project in quite a unique way through Stanley's Men's Shed. So tell us what the Men's Shed is and how they help with the mink work.

Mike: 

Hi Kirstin, yeah. I met Mark, the project lead, initially when he came to the Men's Shed inquiring about our ability and resources to make the actual rafts that are used on the rivers and streams for monitoring the mink and when I got chatting to Mark about it we had more of a discussion and I ended up as a volunteer working with him. Yeah. 

Kirstin: 

Excellent. And what is actually involved in the mink volunteering work? What type of things do you and the men in the Men's Shed actually do? 

Mike: 

It's actually not terribly onerous, the mink volunteering, in as much that, when I started, first of all, we would lay down clay pads in the middle of the raft, and when mink prints were identified on the clay we would install a humane live trap so that we didn't catch non target species. Once we had identified them and laid out the trap, we would monitor them on a daily basis. We could only monitor the clay ones on a weekly basis, but once the trap was set, we had to, in case there was an animal caught in it. But now, technology has moved on, and we have what are called Remoti units, which actually send, whenever the trap is activated, they send a signal to each of the volunteers that have them to their phones, and so they can go down and deal with any caught animal very quickly.

Kirstin: 

And I presume, that's a fantastic development with technology and I presume that saves a lot of wasted time checking the traps, does it? 

Mike: 

It certainly does, it saves a lot of monitoring time once you gain confidence in it as with anything it takes a wee while to get confidence in the new technology and I guess a lot of the volunteers when they got Remoti first of all probably went and checked the trap just to make sure it was working. But once you gain confidence in it and the batteries, and the Remoti units operate for over two years. Mark checked my batteries at the end of last season and he said, nah, there were still 95 percent in them. It has been a huge boon because it means then you can leave the trap and, while I'm sure we all go and check them irregularly, you can leave them for a week without any problem to make sure that there's nothing happening.

Kirstin: 

Yeah, that's brilliant. And as you say, it allows you, if something else did, for instance, get caught in the trap, it allows you to go down quickly and let that other animal out if it's not a mink that's in the trap, so that's fantastic. And what about training, equipment and other requirements for the work? What support do you receive from the Invasives team? 

Mike: 

Yeah, Mark, the project lead, was very good. Initially he explained how the invasive species project was set up and how it worked. He then showed me the raft and he went, came out with me and showed me the best locations, the sort of location you would look for, how to set the raft up and how to fix it. And how to set out the clay and if ever we needed a part, there are essentially three components to the raft. There's the raft itself, the central box, the clay pad or the trap, and then there's a tunnel that goes over the top of it. So any parts that perhaps get washed away in a storm or you lose for any other reason can be very quickly replaced. Just, Mark is only a phone call away or the other coordinators are very close by to give you any help and there is a very good support network. 

Kirstin: 

That's brilliant. And we've spoken to quite a few volunteers and everybody gets different things out of volunteering. You spoke about Stanley's Men's Shed and you've shown us around the kind of set up there and it's extremely impressive. You guys do so much good work. What do you get from volunteering? Why do it and what do you enjoy the most? 

Mike: 

One of the things that sticks in my mind as giving me the greatest boon for it was I've had a lot of people last summer came and said it was absolutely fantastic to see so many ducklings making it through to adulthood because in previous years of course the mink would take the eggs or the ducklings so it's you know people were seeing the ducklings initially but then they were gone a few days later but now these ducklings are 8-10 following their mum and they're actually maturing right through to adulthood. And that's really pleased me knowing that water voles will be benefiting from reducing the mink and so many other water creatures will be benefiting from the mink control. 

Kirstin: 

Absolutely. That's an absolutely fantastic benefit. And, people do talk about the mental and physical health benefits of volunteering. And I think you know you've nailed it on the head there by saying that actually the changes in nature and wildlife, the benefits from the work you guys do is phenomenal. So thank you again for joining us today Mike, it was lovely to meet you. 

Mike: 

Oh, that's kind. Very good. Thank you very much. 

Kirstin: 

So a huge thank you to all the volunteers and staff for being on the podcast, but also for the dedication and hard work. It really wouldn't happen without you. But hopefully our listeners have been inspired to report sightings of non-native invasive species, but also to give volunteering a go. So I'll leave you with a few final thoughts from Jane on how to get involved. 

Jane: 

Thanks so much. So we always try to make sure we're offering meaningful, safe, and supported volunteering experiences. It's really important to us that each volunteer has a positive time with us, whatever their reason for getting involved. We're really appreciative of volunteers and their contributions. And I suppose just a final note to say that this is a really large landscape scale conservation project covering much of Scotland, and it just wouldn't be possible to do what we're doing without the input from our volunteers and collaborators. So if you're at all interested in getting involved, please do get in touch. You can sign up on our website, which is www.invasivespecies.scot or email us at sisi@nature.scot, that's “s i s i @nature.scot”. You don't need any experience or training, we'll provide everything required. So if you fancy giving it a go, please do get in touch. We'd be delighted to hear from you.