Download South Uist - Interview with Johanne Ferguson, Scottish Natural

Transcript: VFT 1: South Uist - Interview with Johanne
Ferguson, Scottish Natural Heritage, Operations Manager
Outer Hebrides Tuesday 22nd January 2013
Question 2: In what way is the machair a cultural as well as environmental
feature of the Hebridean landscape?
I think it’s almost as important culturally, maybe even moreso culturally, than from an environmental point
of view.
The machair wouldn’t exist without people. It’s a semi-natural habitat. Essentially it’s a flat plain because
people have cultivated it. The other important thing that people do is to use seaweed on machair. That
helped to bind sand particles together so that keeps the area stable. So, without this habitat then you
probably wouldn’t support such a high density of people in the area because the machair habitat is quite
fertile, it supports quite a high number of cattle and produces really good quality crops. Without that,
crofting would be quite confined in this area and would probably have to be supplemented by fishing or
whatever else. This has obviously gone on for quite some time, so from a conservation point of view it’s
really important that this sort of activity continues on into the future.
If people were to stop cultivating the machair, or stop using seaweed on it, then it would probably look
quite similar to the area around the airport. Now there’s no grazing on that area, and there’s no cultivation
at present and when you look at that area it’s just this fairly consistent grassy, hummocky-grassy, area. You
lose the wonderful diversity of flowering plants and breeding waders.
The other thing about machair is that it is absolutely fantastic from an environmental point of view. There’s
just this sheer profusion of flowering species. You talk about your clovers, and your eyebrights, and all sorts
of other flowers. They change their colour as the season goes on. So from the start of the season it’s the
whites and the yellows that come out, you get daisies and buttercups and then maybe eyebrights. And then
towards the end of the season it’s the sort of red clover and the vetches so it becomes pink then purple,
and towards the very end of the season there’s things like knapweed. So the machair changes colour week
by week as you go through, from late June early July right through until mid-August and this profusion of
flowering plants supports a huge array of insect life. We have some really iconic species out here, from the
belted beauty (moth) to the great yellow bumble bee. In addition to this there are really high densities of
breeding waders. So in May and early June the machair is just phenominal with all these different breeding
birds crying and engaging in territorial disputes. So it’s got a real vibrancy and activity to it that needs to be
experienced really, to be believed.
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