Series Producer of the Watches, Mark Flowers, looks at what makes our home for the series so unique as we enter the final week of this year's Springwatch.
The Cairngorms are the wildest part of the UK – their snowy peaks, ancient forests and deep lochs define the Highlands of Scotland, and they are full of some of our most rare and most spectacular wildlife.
The home of Springwatch 2019 is the Dell of Abernethy, a lodge built in 1780 deep within the Majestic Caledonian Pine forest. The Dell is surrounded by swathes of ancient pinewoods, moors, open grassland, farmland and garden spaces, all bordered by the stunning River Nethy. Up on the mountain tops the landscape opens up into huge vistas of wilderness which look more like Canada or Scandinavia than Britain.
From here, we have been reaching out to the heart of the Cairngorms to celebrate the unique wildlife that lives within this extreme landscape. From the plateau dwelling ptarmigan and mountain hares to bounding red squirrels and the elusive pine marten, the area is alive with untold wildlife stories surrounding these species.
This year the Cairngorms is also providing the backdrop for a much bigger story – the way our landscape has changed on both geological, and anthropological, time scales. We have been exploring the origins and geography of this rich habitat, defined by the ancient Caledonian or ‘granny’ pines. These age-old forests are home to everything from bizarre insects to the spectacular Capercaillie.
The mountains, here, are a relic of the last ice age, and the effect of glacial action is easy to see on their exposed slopes. However, the exposed slopes also tell a human story – of deforestation and the man-made changes to the landscape.
This year, Springwatch has looked into how the area has changed over time, and introduced the Cairngorms Connect project - which looks to the future and aims to reforest vast swathes of the area in an ambitious 200-year plan. It’s the UK's largest landscape-scale conservation project; bringing together NGOs, private landowners and governmental departments - and just 15 years in, some of the results are extraordinary.