Introduction Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 18:24:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269727000012604 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 77B, 3-19, 1979 The natural environment of the Outer Hebrides John Morton Boyd Nature Conservancy Council, Edinburgh SYNOPSIS The historical review of scientific work done in the Outer Hebrides precedes a scientific profile of the archipelago including geographical, geological, botanical, zoological and resource outlines. Effects of the use of natural resources by man on the natural environment are discussed. Management of land and water for the purposes of nature conservation are given by descriptions of the Loch Druidibeg and Monach Islands National Nature Reserves and other Sites of Special Scientific Interest. These exemplify existing case studies and procedures in nature conservation conducted by the Nature Conservancy Council and others. In conclusion, the Outer Hebrides are set in the context of the National Planning Guidelines of the Scottish Development Department which show resources of 'national' importance in agriculture and nature conser- vation. SCIENTIFIC HISTORY In the introduction to a group of essays on the Western Isles of Scotland (published in 1948) James Fisher wrote: A synthesis of recent scientific research in the Western Isles will soon be needed. Biologists have been exploring this-region very much on their own and without much linking or cross-criticism of each other's explorations. Nobody could deprecate the enterprise of these workers (and considerable enterprise is needed to get to some of the Western Isles), but everybody must hope that soon a new synthesis will be made and new targets set by a united band of scientists eager to do research in these glorious isles where they are on the threshold of new discoveries. This came at a critical point in the scientific history of the Outer Hebrides; it was in the early 1950s that scientific survey and research became more highly funded and organized than ever before, mainly through the agencies of the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) and, in the 1960s, the Natural Environment Research Council. The hopes of James Fisher have largely been fulfilled during this time and it is the results of work in this period that are gathered in this Symposium volume. Martin's Description of the Western Isles (1703) is regarded as the datum of the historical record of the Outer Hebrides, preceded only by the account of Donald Monro, High Dean of the Isles, c. 1549 (first published in 1774). Individual travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries such as Pennant (1774-76), MacCulloch (1824), Macgilliv- ray (1830) and Harvie-Brown and Buckley (1888) all mention the natural history and natural resources of the Outer Hebrides in varying degrees. The three 19th-century works were outstanding not simply for the information which they contained but also for their organized scientific approach to the geology and natural history of the Outer Hebrides. Details of the natural environment are also contained within the Statistical Account (1791-99) and New Statistical Account (1845). Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 18:24:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269727000012604 4 John Morton Boyd The 19th century was remarkable for the number of men of private means who were naturalists with a passion for exploring the Hebrides; foremost among these was J. A. Harvie-Brown, the main author of A Vertebrate Fauna of the Outer Hebrides. During this period a fashionable personality, the sportsman-naturalist, was to be found among landowners and shooting tenants. In the Outer Hebrides Lord Dunmore, Sir John Ord, Lady Gordon Cathcart and Lady Mathieson were all naturalists or patrons of natural history encouraging these interests in their gamekeepers and sporting tenantry. With the establishment of many lighthouses, an interest in bird migration developed among lightkeepers which was fostered by Harvie-Brown and later into this century by W. Eagle Clarke. Nonetheless, many decades were to pass after MacCulloch's work on geology was published in 1819 before further substantial contributions were made to the scientific literature. It was not until the Darwinian period in the latter part of the 19th century that there was a growing and abiding interest in the natural environment of the Outer Hebrides. However, a great deal of scientific recording was in progress though it was unco-ordinated. For example, early meteorological records were published in the Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society. The lack of maps was a clear disincen- tive to organize survey work in every field of interest and there is little doubt that the publication by the Ordnance Survey of the first editions of the 1:63,360 and the 1:10,560 series in 1876 provided the modern geographical base and a great stimulus to scientific survey work. The development of geological survey, for example, to which MacCulloch had given so much attention without such cartographical help was begun and Geikie (1873, 1878) provided a contribution to the glaciology of the Outer Hebrides which stands in the geological records as an isolated publication spanning a century between the efforts of MacCulloch and those of Jehu and Craig in the 1920s and 1930s. In the biological field a similar gap occurred between the writings of William Macgillivray (1830) and those of H. C. Watson (1883), who created the vice-counties making the Outer Hebrides V-C 110 and mentioned them in his Topographical Botany. The 1870s saw the awakening of a desire among scientists to become more highly organized. The influence of Huxley and Darwin among others had spread north and the tangible outcome was the botanical papers by J. H. Balfour and C. C. Babington (1882-84) and J. W. H. Trail (1898-1909). Within this upsurge of interest came the Harvie-Brown and Buckley Fauna (1888) and work on the freshwaters by Scott (1891), followed by the Bathymetrical Survey of the Scottish Freshwater Lochs by Sir John Murray and Laurence Pullar (1910). This was perhaps the first great work of the modern scientific era in the Outer Hebrides and is still the baseline for work on freshwaters, to which little has since been added. A few limnologists working in this field have concentrated mostly on the eutrophic system of the machair lochs. An exception was Edith Nicol (1936) whose work on brackish water stood alone until the paper in this field by A. R. Waterston and I. H. J. Lyster (1979*). The 1930s saw the beginning of a period of scientific investigation in the Outer Hebrides which has lasted until the present day. This resulted in a great deal of unco-ordinated effort that prompted Fisher to make his plea for synthesis and cross- criticism. The Oxford-Cambridge expedition to the newly evacuated St Kilda in 1931 provided a set of key papers which were collected and published by Stewart (1937). * Each reference to a paper in this Symposium is indicated by an asterisk. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.226, on 30 Sep 2021 at 18:24:32, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269727000012604 The natural environment of the Outer Hebrides 5 This expedition set a high standard which was emulated by others: from Edinburgh University to Barra in 1935, Glasgow University to Canna in 1936, St Kilda in 1952 and 1956, and to North Rona in 1958. In the past 20 years there have been more expeditions to the Monach Islands, Mingulay and the Shiant Islands, all with pub- lished results. To this field of opportunism and disorder in the 1930s came Fraser Darling, initiating a new period of scientific effort which was touched with a sense of both physical and intellectual challenge. He brought the fresh dimension of ecological interdependence in nature pioneered by Elton (1927) and Tansley (1939) to the study of island ecosystems, aware that basic life processes could be seen with unusual clarity in small remote islands. Darling's main work was in the interface between man and nature, extrapolating from the behaviour and ecology of animals into that of mankind with unswerving singlemindedness. He was convinced that man and animal were parts of the same comprehensive system and that man's moral and political makeup was an ecological factor capable of changing the entire character of the natural environment. The West Highland Survey (Darling 1955) is a mine of ecological information coupled with an insight into the ecological consequences of current landuse and natural resource management in the Hebrides. A contemporary of Darling, James Fisher was an ornithologist and bibliographer with an insatiable passion for remote seabird islands, particularly St Kilda. His monograph on The Fulmar (1952) was a milestone in marine ornithology in which the Outer Hebrides featured largely. In this period also, the late Dr J. W. Campbell compiled a detailed record of the birds of the Outer Hebrides which, due to his untimely death, was never published. At the same time his sister, Miss M. S. Campbell, compiled a flora of the Hebrides which she hopes to publish in the near future. A look at the reference lists to most of the papers of this Symposium will show how, in the last 25 years, there has been a great increase in the amount of organized work done in almost every aspect of the natural environment of the Outer Hebrides.