Grantee: Keep Oban Beautiful

Duration: March 2024 – May 2025

The West Coast of Scotland is home to some of the last ‘Temperate Rainforest’ – a unique habitat consisting of native trees, rivers, and globally-rare plants such as ocean bryophytes. However, centuries of clearance and overgrazing have resulted in only small fragments remaining, which are at risk of further decline without conservation measures. As landscape scale approaches to rainforest restoration continue to grow, the Scottish Government recently recognised the “need for all partners to ensure continued community engagement” with rainforest projects, to ensure their sustainable delivery at a local and national scale.

The project

Keep Oban Beautiful are a local organisation who support community involvement in improving Oban’s local environment. In 2023, they identified an unused strip of council-owned woodland adjacent to the High School. It was in a neglected state, having fallen victim to fly-tipping and the spread of Invasive Non-Native Species (INNS). However, rare oceanic bryophytes and lichens signalled that this woodland was a fragment of rainforest, which, coupled with its accessible location in the centre of town, inspired an effort to ‘rehabilitate’ this woodland for the benefit of humans and wildlife.

Work parties, in partnership with the council and local contractors, began to clear litter out the woodland and tackle INNS removal over the winter. The in April 2024, HIEF awarded Keep Oban Beautiful a grant of £5000 to grow the project further.

Photos courtesy of Keep Oban Beautiful

Project Activities

The HIEF grant is paying for the costs of INNS removal, habitat creation, and increasing accessibility and public engagement within the woodland.

While swathes of invasive rhododendron have been cleared by volunteers, large Sitka spruce require contracted felling to remove. It is hoped these will then be carved and integrated into an ‘art trail’ through partnership with the High School art class.

Simultaneously, plans are being developed to create a thriving wetland ecosystem on the fringes of the woodlands. A boardwalk will increase accessibility to this area, and act as a gateway to the rest of the woodland.

Interpretative material such as a QR trail, art trail and wildlife boxes will further develop the visitor experience to the woodland for high school children, locals passing through, and tourists visiting the area.

Outcomes and impact

INNS removal and habitat creation will increase the biodiversity and health of the woodland. The simultaneous increase in accessibility will create educational and recreational opportunities for students, locals and visitors.

It is hoped this will act as a model for urban woodland regeneration, and rainforest community-engagement, for other towns like Oban to trial.