A hundred-year strategy
We're completing landscape scale nature work with communities that go far beyond our generation. That is the kind of ambition the Crom-Shed is built on.
Restoration takes longer than our lifetime
The Cromarty Firth catchment does not care about our quarterly reports. It cares whether the alder roots are holding the bank in March, whether the gravel bed is clean in November, whether the otter finds enough fish in February. Every project we run is a small, careful payment into that long account.
Our one-hundred-year ambition also affects how we make decisions. When you are accountable to a future you will never see, you become more honest about what genuinely serves the ecosystem and what serves the communities in it. That clarity is one of the most useful things the long view gives us.
See the projects delivering thisHow we structure the work
Every project the Crom-Shed runs sits inside one of these four pillars. They are not separate programmes. They are the same ambition approached from four directions.
Restore rivers
Spawning gravel, riparian planting, barrier removal where it serves the river. Stretches of the main rivers in the watershed have already begun their restoration journey, with the Alness next on the agenda.
Enhance habitat
Native woodland, wetland, peatland and saltmarsh along the Firth. Working with the people who have lived and worked on this land far longer than ourselves.
Build resilience
Climate-ready landscapes that hold water, soil and species through the next century. Slowing water in the hills, storing carbon in restored peat, reducing flood risk for the communities downstream.
Empower community
Landowners, farmers, schools and volunteers across the entire catchment. Every project is a conversation first. Long-term ecological change requires sustained community ownership, and that cannot be rushed.
What we are working towards
Foundations
Eight active projects across the catchment. An artist in residence. Over 24 connections made with local organisations, community groups and projects. The infrastructure is built, the relationships with landowners and partners are establishing.
Rivers reconnected
Spawning habitat restored across the major rivers feeding the Firth. Native riparian planting established and self-sustaining along priority stretches of the Orrin and Conon. Salmon runs showing measurable improvement. The lower river recognisable again to the people who remember it.
Woodland returning
Landscape-scale native woodland restoration across the upper catchment, with natural regeneration creating corridors linking remnant ancient woodland. Peatland restoration reducing downstream flood peaks. A generation of children who have grown up planting trees and counting invertebrates.
A resilient catchment
The ecological processes that hold a healthy watershed together are functioning at landscape scale. Water retention, carbon storage, species diversity. Farming and conservation operating in partnership to improve profits and soil structure. Communities whose identity is built around the health of the land they live in.
A watershed that manages itself
This is the destination we do not expect to see. A Cromarty Firth catchment that has found its own equilibrium. Rivers with their full complement of species. Woodland at its natural extent. Saltmarsh and the Sutors holding firm against a changing sea. A community of landowners, farmers, ecologists and residents who carry the memory of what was and the knowledge of how it came to be. The Crom-Shed's work, if all goes well, will be finished by then.
I would love to see our communities come together to dovetail their efforts for nature to form a holistic approach that's informed and led by the people who live here.