Predator communities across Britain vary in how intact they are, often containing both recovering and declining species. This is true in the Cairngorms Connect landscape that boasts a diverse guild of mammalian predators including red foxes, badgers, pine marten, and wild cats. The Cairngorms Connect Predator Project is collaborative research project led by the Universities of Aberdeen, St Andrews, and UHI, and in partnership with Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), RSPB Scotland, The Highland Raptor Study Group, and WildLand Limited. Our goal is to study the structure and dynamics of mammalian predator communities, how they respond to each other and to humans, and their effects on the wider ecological community.
We host all our current camera trap deployments on MammalWeb, a citizen science platform where you can help identify all the species we detect. For details of how to take part, see here
If you are interested in knowing more about our research, about whether our methods can be used in your landscapes, or are interested in collaborating with the CCPP, please contact Cairngorms Connect directly or you can contact the group leads:
How do recreational activities alter spatiotemporal species interactions networks, and can this knowledge assist in promoting pro-environmental behaviour?
Amber Cowans, University of St Andrews | Funded by NERC with support from FLS and WildLand Limited
As well as a home for wildlife, the Cairngorms Connect landscape is enjoyed by around 2 million visitors a year. Through AI-assisted monitoring with camera traps and audio units, this research develops efficient methods to investigate the responses of large mammals and birds to human recreation in Cairngorms Connect. The project also investigates attitudes and responses of people in Scotland to behavioural requests made on signs, such as keeping dogs on leads and avoiding sensitive areas.
Guidance for Integrating AI into Ecological Workflows
When is a wild-living cat a Wildcat? Using carnivore guild interactions to decipher ecological function
Rosie Irwin Holbrey, University of Aberdeen | Funded by NERC with support from FLS and WildLand Limited
Wildcat reintroductions have been ongoing in Cairngorms Connect since 2023. There also remain a handful of populations of hybridised wild-living cats across Scotland. This presents a unique opportunity to compare the ecology of hybridised cats with wildcats of high wildcat genetics to better understand the effects of hybridisation on wildcat ecology. This research will investigate the diet and inter-species interactions of wildcats and hybrids. We will do this using data obtained from eDNA in scats and using camera traps to monitor wild-living cats and coexisting carnivores (Pine Martens, Foxes and Badgers).
Developing an efficient and accessible “data-to-decision” pipeline for remotely sensed biodiversity monitoring data
Oliver Hartley, University of St Andrews | Funded by NERC with support from FLS
To support effective wildlife monitoring, management, and conservation efforts within the Cairngorms Connect landscape, a large camera-trap array is being used to collect observational data. This results in very large volumes of data (hundreds of thousands of images), which means the task of manually processing these images is impractical, slowing down progress. To improve efficiency, AI-assisted species recognition offers an attractive alternative, but these methods are technically challenging, and the reliability varies considerably. This research aims to develop a user-friendly, statistically rigorous approach to ensure responsible integration of AI into ecological monitoring workflows.
Impact control of recovering predators, as an alternative method of predator control
Jack Bamber, University of Aberdeen | Funded by NERC with support from FLS and WildLand Limited
The recovery of predators alongside the presence of rare prey, produces conservation conflict, where the return of predators may add to the list of factors causing a decrease in prey populations, epitomised by the conflict between pine martens and Capercaillie. This PhD project experimentally evaluated diversionary feeding as a non-lethal strategy to mitigate predator impacts, by altering predator foraging behaviour during the vulnerable nesting window. This work is now informing policy and practice, including The Capercaillie Emergency plan.
Lethal and non-lethal interactions and competition in guilds of boreal forest predators
Cristian N Waggershauser, University of Aberdeen | Funded by University of Aberdeen and FLS, with support from WildLand Limited
The recovery of avian and mammalian predator communities in Europe and Britain, poses a challenge for the conservation of species vulnerable to predation. In this thesis, we explored how predators interact with each other and their prey in Scotland. We studied both lethal and non-lethal (fear) interactions and considered their implications for conservation. To do this, we used DNA-based and camera trapping methods.
