Highlanders Highlands - Scotland's Wild Heart

Scoured by ice,

and weathered by storms.

20,000 square miles of rugged coastline,

lochs and mountains.

On the face of it, it looks bleak and lifeless,

but wildlife is thriving in this unforgiving place

if you know where to look.

The seasons may be harsh...

..and the opportunities fleeting...

..but animals and people have found ways to succeed here,

turning adversity into advantage.

This is Scotland's wild heart.

The Highlands.

Wild animals and people have always lived side by side in the Highlands.

Sharing the same landscape,

and experiencing the same seasons.

But over the years, humans have shaped this place,

stamping their authority on the landscape...

FIREWORKS EXPLODE

They're good, they're like flowers.

..and dominating their wild neighbours.

The Highlands may look like 20,000 square miles of pure wilderness...

..but for millennia, people have left their mark

on these mountains and valleys.

The natural forest which once covered this landscape

was cleared for farmland and felled for timber,

while grazing by livestock and deer

prevented young trees from growing back.

And while some species flourished,

others were driven to extinction by habitat loss and overhunting.

But now the balance is changing,

and people have started to realise just how much we need to put back.

Never before have the modern Highlands seen so much work

being done to repair the damage of the past.

One bird more than any other sums up the changing relationship

between people and the Highland landscape.

The osprey.

This is the Trossachs National Park in the Southern Highlands.

Lush forest, rugged mountains and excellent fishing

make this some of the best osprey habitat in Scotland.

Several breeding pairs have successfully set up home here.

There's a nest just up here.

Conservation manager Dave Anderson and his colleague Simon Smith

know every detail of the lives of the ospreys that live here.

Today, they're visiting a nest as part of a continuing study.

-I'll carry everything, then, shall I?

-Yeah. Come on.

I work for the Forestry Commission, and within our land holdings,

we have a huge range of species.

A lot of different birds of prey, and the osprey being one of them.

And the general public rely on us to protect the wildlife that's in here.

Simon's an experienced climber, and he needs to be -

it's 50 feet to the top.

The parent birds are aware of his presence,

and have already taken to the wing.

Sounds like she's pleased to see us!

To the parent birds, Simon is a potential predator.

OSPREYS CALL

They call to their chicks to lie flat,

camouflaging themselves in the nest.

Ospreys nest typically right in the very crown of the tree,

and these birds are cryptically coloured, so that any predator -

a big eagle flying over the top of them - would look down,

and they don't actually think that there's anything on the nest.

Dave and Simon visit the nests every year.

The chicks are given a thorough check-up, and will be weighed,

measured and ringed.

The process provides invaluable data on the development

and movement of the osprey population in these forests.

Ospreys are a really great conservation story.

They've gone from strength to strength,

and now we're probably looking at a population

across the UK of nearly 300 pairs.

These ospreys, when they leave here, they're going to go back to

the West Coast of Africa or Portugal or Spain to overwinter,

and they'll do that for two years before returning back to the UK.

Hopefully, they'll end up back in Scotland -

that's where I'd like to see them, anyway.

The population around this area's doing really well.

It's an extraordinary comeback story.

At the turn of the century, the osprey was virtually extinct

as a breeding bird in Scotland -

wiped out by egg collectors and hunters.

But in the 1950s, after an absence of nearly 40 years,

the osprey came back.

It all started in a forest near Aviemore,

120 miles north of the Trossachs.

In 1954, a pair of Scandinavian birds appeared, and bred

at Loch Garten, which is now an RSPB reserve.

But the nest was repeatedly raided by egg collectors.

In response, the RSPB rolled out Operation Osprey,

which became its most powerful weapon

in the battle to protect these birds.

At its heart was a revolutionary concept

that's now fundamental to modern conservation -

the idea of public engagement.

Jennifer Clark is the RSPB information officer at Loch Garten.

When they first bred, rather than keeping it a secret,

we decided that it would be better to tell the public about this,

and to invite them to come and see these birds, with the idea that

if we told the public about what was happening to them,

and people came to see the birds, that people would be on the side

of the birds and not the side of the egg collectors, and just to change

people's opinions and ideas on how we treat nature, and it works.

If you speak to any children now about egg collecting,

they don't know what it is.

Do you want to have a guess?

What do you think happened when those first ospreys came back?

The dedication of people like Jennifer is inspiring visitors

who come to the reserve.

Do you think they hatched into chicks?

It's all about showing people wildlife, nature,

showing them their ospreys, educating them about what we do here

on the reserve and the wider work that RSPB does.

So, it's an educational platform and a great way to gain support.

It's this public engagement that has helped to protect the osprey,

allowing it to expand its range across the Highlands and beyond.

I love wildlife, I love nature, but the story of the ospreys

is gripping the whole history of this place.

The brilliant thing about ospreys is they came back on their own -

we didn't bring them back, they just turned up,

and when they did, we protected what was there,

and to say that we've got 300 breeding pairs

across the country now is fantastic.

And last year, which was the 60th anniversary

of ospreys returning to Scotland,

we had their 100th chick fledge from the Loch Garten nest,

so that's a nice success story in conservation.

The osprey's comeback is an extraordinary tale,

and the Highlands are full of stories like this.

Stories of survival...

..and stories of change.

Generation after generation of families have lived and worked here.

And like the wildlife, people, too, have learned to endure the seasons.

Towering above the town of Aviemore are the high tops of the Cairngorms.

A little piece of the Arctic in the Highlands of Scotland.

Here only species adapted to sub-zero conditions can survive.

This is the coldest place in Britain,

where temperatures can fall as low as minus 27 degrees.

Fiona Smith and her colleague Abigail

are trekking up the mountainside in search of a herd of animals

perfectly adapted to this life in the freezer.

-SHE CALLS:

-Come! Now!

They're reindeer - the only free-ranging herd in Britain.

-SHE CALLS:

-Come! Now!

The Cairngorms is the only habitat in Britain

that reindeer can live naturally,

because of its vegetation that grows,

because of the climate we get here.

It gets the Arctic and sub-Arctic ecosystem,

and that is where reindeer thrive.

It's where they live, it's where they come from.

The 150-strong herd do get a helping hand, and extra food,

from the Cairngorm Reindeer Centre, owned and run by Fiona's family.

To have such a tame animal in such a wild environment,

I think is really special, and they're super-friendly

and super-greedy, and yeah, they're just a delight to be around.

I couldn't see myself in a city, stuck in an office, that's for sure.

I mean, it gets you out and about, which is obviously nice.

Working with the reindeer, you know, they're a great animal to work with,

and I think it's something about working in their environment

with such tame animals.

There's not many opportunities you could do that.

So, yeah. No, it's pretty special.

Reindeer became extinct in Britain at the end of the last ice age.

But then in 1952, a herd was reintroduced from Scandinavia.

Since then, these iconic animals have been thriving.

In the late 1980s, Fiona's parents, Tilly and Alan, bought the herd,

and took on its management.

When I came up to work with the reindeer,

I felt I had found my place.

I had a passion for deer, which I got from my own father.

I did a degree in zoology, and I knew about the reindeer in Scotland.

So, I came to work here as a volunteer in 1981.

The reindeer were endearing, the mountains were fantastic,

and the keeper wasn't bad looking, so we got married!

I think they are certainly in harmony with the environment.

They're living and browsing on the natural vegetation

that is growing here.

But we have a role as well here.

We have to be sensible about the numbers of reindeer that we

actually have on the ground.

And so we do control the breeding, we do make sure we keep our numbers

that are sustainable to the environment they're living in.

Businesses like Tilly and Fiona's depend on tourism.

Nature-based tourism brings in £1.4 billion a year

to the Scottish economy.

We are a tourist attraction, because you need an income for anything,

and the tourism brings that income to the herd.

We run an adoption scheme, so people adopt the reindeer.

It becomes quite a sort of close-knit community of people

that are just reindeer enthusiasts.

Without a doubt, I belong here in the Highlands,

because of the reindeer.

For me, they provide me with all my joy.

They are just lovely animals to be amongst.

They come and they go.

The next descendants come through, and become those characters.

And knowing an animal personally in such a beautiful, wild environment

is an honour, I would say.

4,000 feet below the reindeer's icy world,

the great Caledonian pine forest

is cloaked in the first snowfall of the year.

Although winter can be tough on wildlife,

the season can be the most beautiful of the Highland year.

For photographer Neil McIntyre, it's the perfect opportunity to capture

the ways in which wildlife copes with the extreme conditions.

Photographing in the Highlands is... It's a big part of me, you know.

It's my way of communicating with the things I see,

and with other people.

You know, it really all revolves round the picture taken.

You take a picture - don't take what you see, take what you feel,

and I think if you put that principle in it,

it does tell in the pictures.

You know, it's not just about one little still image -

it goes far beyond that, and it gives you a connection to wildlife,

there's no doubt about that. For me it does, anyway.

Neil has lived on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park

all his life.

My father was a gamekeeper, and he got a job up in the Highlands here,

and moved here when I was just a young boy.

That was how I really got into it.

I'm not somebody that can, sadly, write particularly well, you know,

for telling stories and things like that,

so I've seen photography as a means for me to communicate

to other people

what I was seeing, and how special some of these things were.

As well being a successful wildlife photographer,

Neil shares his passion for this corner of the Highlands

with visitors who come here on photographic safaris.

The Highlands has always been a bit of a mecca

for a lot of outdoor people.

Traditionally, it's been the hunting, shooting, fishing people

that have come to the Highlands

to do these very things, and that will continue.

But without a shadow of a doubt, over the last decade probably,

there's been quite a considerable increase in the amount of people

wanting to do similar things, but shoot it with a camera

instead of, obviously, shooting it with a rifle or a gun.

So, there's no reason both these things can't work together.

You get nice soft backlight in here in the morning, you know.

Cos it sort of filters through the trees -

it's not too harsh, it's quite nice.

I like to focus on individual species,

and spend as much time I can with them.

Particularly things like the red squirrels and crested tits,

for example, are the two ones I probably spend the most time with.

The thing about a photograph - you're capturing a moment in time -

and then you can do that, and then the animal or bird

just goes about its daily business again,

and it's as if you've never been there.

With one word - it's magic, it's a magic place.

It has an aura about it that very few places have.

It's got the wildlife, it's got the mountains, the lochs, the glens,

and the light you get is second to none.

There's hardly a day, certainly when I'm outside, that you don't

look around you and think, you know, "I'm a very lucky, lucky fellow."

BIRD SINGS

The Caledonian Pine Forest at the heart of the National Park

is Scotland's most iconic woodland wilderness.

6,000 years ago, these forests covered nearly 6,000 square miles,

and formed a vast band of northern forest

that stretched across three continents.

The Romans called it the Great Wood of Caledon.

Rich in Scots pine, birch, oak and rowan trees,

this forest was a special place for wildlife.

But over the last 2,000 years, these woods were decimated.

Today, perhaps just 1% of the ancient forest remains.

Dr David Hetherington is a National Park ecologist,

and has a special interest in the restoration of these woodlands.

At around 4,500 square kilometres, the Cairngorms National Park

is one of the largest national parks in the whole of Europe.

We have some really special fragments,

remnants left of Caledonian Forest which are really quite distinctive

of this part of Scotland.

But it's important to say that this is not some uninhabited wilderness.

The Cairngorms National Park is home to 18,000 people who live here,

and who work here.

A familiar cast of characters can still be found

in these ancient woodlands.

But deep in the undergrowth lives an equally important

set of animals, the keystone species of this forest micro world.

Never seen so many.

Hayley Wiswell is an ecologist

for the Cairngorms National Park Authority.

They're all very dark.

She introduces groups of naturalists, rangers and foresters

to the miniature world of the forest floor.

Invertebrates are absolutely vital for the health of the forest,

because of the variety of roles that they play.

Whether they're food for the small birds or mammals,

or whether they're decomposing dead wood,

breaking it down and turning it into nutrients that the forest can use.

So, they're extraordinarily important.

This enormous nest is home to Hayley's favourite species -

the Scottish wood ant.

These bustling ant cities can be six feet wide.

Their presence indicates a healthy forest.

The wood ants themselves are kind of a keystone species, if you like.

Not only are they nurturing aphid colonies in the trees,

which reduce the capacity of the tree to grow leaves,

but they also do other things, like, they disperse seeds.

So some plants in the pine forest produce seeds that are only

dispersed by ants.

And then the wood ant colony itself, the actual nest, is home to species

of invertebrates that are only found in wood ant nests -

they're not found anywhere else.

They're helping the trees to grow, they're helping plants to grow,

they're supporting all these other organisms.

I think the forest would be...

It would be a different place without them.

You might have dozens of nests in a hectare of forest.

So that's millions and millions of ants running around.

So, in terms of sheer biomass,

they're...yeah, definitely the apex predator

of the Caledonian pine forests.

Centuries ago, apex predators of a very different kind

roamed these forests.

The ancient people here shared their woodland home with lynx,

bears and wolves.

Eventually, we hunted these animals to extinction.

But one predator has managed to hang on.

The Scottish wildcat.

What it lacks in size, it makes up for in ferocity.

Nicknamed the Highland Tiger,

this cat is even more endangered than its striped Asian cousin.

This is not a domestic cat that has gone wild -

this is a truly wild animal that moved in here shortly after

the glaciers left Britain.

Unfortunately, it really is in trouble.

Its range has contracted massively

from once having covered the whole of Britain,

to just parts of the Scottish Highlands.

But the real problem that the wildcat faces

is because it's quite closely related genetically

to the domestic cat,

it can actually interbreed and produce fertile hybrids.

And this is a real problem, because with each passing generation,

the wildcat is becoming more and more diluted,

and less and less distinctive of that native animal

that we've had for so, so long in Scotland.

A coordinated conservation effort has set up

Scottish Wildcat Action.

It's the first national effort to protect the cats in the wild,

and has established a conservation breeding programme.

Douglas Richardson is head of Living Collections

at the Highland Wildlife Park.

I firmly believe that a healthy captive population

of Scottish wildcats in high quality environments

will be crucial to the survival of the species.

At the very least, that safety net role that they play.

Someone alluded to... captive breeding programmes

are like lifeboats on an ocean liner.

You hope you never have to use one,

but it's nice to know that they're there.

Captive-bred wildcats like 11-year-old Hamish

are being exchanged between parks to mate

with genetically strong females to secure the future bloodline.

Today, Hamish is being loaned to the Aigas Field Centre near Inverness,

in the hope that he'll breed with one of their female wildcats.

Hello, what's all this?

What's this?

He's quite a character, he's not at all dangerous.

Though, saying that, I wouldn't want him to land on the top of my head.

He's very good with females, and he's excellent with his offspring.

I've actually seen him carrying and cleaning his kittens on occasion.

If Hamish and his female companions are successful,

their descendants may eventually be released back into the Highlands,

but only into protected areas.

I want to get that captive programme to a level that,

if it all goes belly-up as far as the wild population is concerned,

we still have that cushion.

It's not just about captive breeding in some of these facilities -

it's about education and raising awareness -

making people aware that we have this fantastic animal

living in the wild here in Scotland, and it does need our help.

If animals like the wildcat are to successfully re-establish themselves

in the Highlands, it's critical there's enough habitat

for them to live in.

Their original home in the Caledonian Forest

is only just recovering

from centuries of exploitation and neglect.

It's really in the last few decades we've begun to realise

that these old forest remnants, that are a link back

to the end of the ice age, need our help,

and that there's been some fantastic work done to try and expand

those forests and save them from any further damage.

And here in the Cairngorms National Park,

we see a whole variety of different projects,

where the native woodland is coming back and really quite spectacularly.

Old fragments are beginning to join up with one another - the woodlands

are gradually moving up the hill through natural regeneration.

So a fantastic area for the kind of landscape-scale forest restoration.

On the edge of Abernethy Forest,

Desmond Dugan is helping the forest regenerate naturally,

using sensitive and low-impact methods of replanting.

In recent years, the pine forest has been receding down the hill

because of man's management.

Man has converted some of the woodlands here to heather moor,

perhaps for grouse shooting or for sheep ranching,

so the forest has been lost, and we here at RSPB Abernethy

are trying to encourage the re-colonisation of the forest,

and we're trying to do that mostly by natural processes.

To further assist the growth and diversity of the forest,

Desmond and his colleague Alison Greggans are sowing the seeds

of native species like the alder.

This was all collected last autumn.

It's been in the cold store between two and four degrees

to keep it cool, to stop it germinating.

We're now sowing some of the seed into the river -

directly into the river here, in this little stream here.

And we're also scuffing some of the seed into the riverside gravel,

because alder is water-distributed.

The seed falls into the river, it's washed downstream, and gets lodged

in little nooks and crannies, downstream.

Getting more forest is not just about creating a habit for wildlife.

We want to create a managed environment here

so that people can come and enjoy.

Whether you enjoy just

a quiet day's bird-watching or visiting the osprey centre,

or perhaps botanising,

or doing whatever you enjoy in the natural landscape.

It's very satisfying to walk through the forest,

because some of the trees are as old as 400 years old,

and you can put your hand on the tree and make a wish for the future,

for your family or whatever - it's really quite a humbling experience.

To feel the past - to walk through the forest is to feel the past.

Thanks to people like Desmond,

the forest has a chance to flourish again.

It's because of this kind of habitat restoration that real progress

is being made in re-introducing endangered species.

We have a whole range of species now that we just didn't have

100 years ago - we'd lost them, they'd become extinct.

Red squirrels were found in only one or two pockets of woodland

here in the Cairngorms, and in other parts of the Highlands,

had to be reintroduced from elsewhere.

The capercaillie had actually gone extinct in Scotland,

and was reintroduced by private estates in the 19th century.

We've seen the re-introduction of other birds of prey,

such as the red kite.

So there's some real conservation successes,

and I'm sure many of these will continue in the future.

KITE CALLS

Red kites are a soaring symbol of hope in the Highlands.

Once persecuted to extinction here,

the birds were reintroduced from Europe in the 1990s,

after an absence of nearly 120 years.

Dave Anderson is monitoring this new breeding population

in the Trossachs.

The birds that we're monitoring here in Central Scotland were put back

in '96, and the population now is between 75 and 80 pairs.

KITE CALLS

Close to the nesting sites, Argaty Farm's feeding station

provides extra benefits for red kites...

and people.

Red kites need as much help as they can

when they're first introduced to an area,

and I think that these feeding stations

offer not only a little bit of support,

particularly in the wintertime, for red kites,

but it also gives people an opportunity to bond with these birds

that have been introduced into their area.

The Argaty lunchtime acrobatics are guaranteed to impress.

These spectacular birds of prey turn up in big numbers

for the free hand-outs.

CROW CALLS

Other birds of prey like buzzards

are no match for this kind of aerial bombardment.

The kites swoop in, grab the food, and fly away with it.

They're not really wanting to be standing, walking about,

because they do get mobbed, not just by the crows and by the buzzards,

but by their own kind,

cos they're always stealing off each other.

Wildlife has come in there to obviously get a free meal,

and people can go there and enjoy it,

and it's quite a spectacle in the wintertime,

when you have 50, 60, 70 red kites

wheeling over the tops of people.

These are people who don't get the opportunities

that people like myself get to go into nests,

and I think it's really important that they get that opportunity.

Otherwise why would they even bother thinking about protecting them?

Re-wilding is one of these words that some people might not like.

But we've sanitised quite a lot of the Highlands,

and I think it's really important to get back to re-wilding the land,

and that might mean putting animals back in here that have been missing

for a long time, and birds.

And the red kite was missing for a long, long time,

and it's great to see it back.

But there are some people whose plans for re-wilding

are much more radical.

70 miles north of the Cairngorms,

philanthropist Paul Lister has begun a re-wilding project,

restoring lost plant and animal species

at his Alladale Wilderness Reserve.

Well, we've been used to hundreds of years of a sterile landscape,

like a dead zone, for, you know, since the last 1,000 years -

since the Norman Conquest.

You know, we've been, sort of, sanitising our landscape,

and so it's very difficult for people to understand where we're at.

You know, visitors, tourists come to Scotland

and see these wonderful hills -

open hills, treeless hills - and they think that's normal.

Over the centuries, we've slowly taken it all apart,

until now we're just left with fragments of old forest.

In fact, there's only 1% left.

That's not much of a legacy, is it, to leave behind?

Paul wants to bring large carnivores back to Scotland.

He, and others, believe that nature needs top predators like wolves

and bears to help balance out the ecosystem.

This will give vegetation a chance to recover

from overgrazing by deer, benefiting all wildlife.

He also believes these animals will benefit

the people of the Highlands through eco-tourism.

I think that there's a bigger picture we're missing here -

to be able to bring back wolves and bears and create more revenue,

more job opportunities, and really see the place come alive,

and that's really what I hope for.

I mean, look at the fantastic woods behind us here.

Hundreds of years ago, there would have been wolves and bears in here.

And it's just a shame, that, to me - as magnificent as they look,

it's kind of like a dead zone.

We've got to move forward, we've got to see some change,

and we've got to progress.

Life is not about the past, it's about the future,

and we need to build a new future, a new consciousness,

a new way of treating the landscape.

Biologically, you know, lynx and wolves and bears,

and some of these other large mammal species

could easily live in Scotland.

You know, the biological conditions are there.

The biological conditions will probably improve with time,

as we get more woodland cover, etc.

So, yes, these large mammals could definitely live here.

But, of course, the crucial factor is not the biology,

it's the human environment.

Are humans prepared to live alongside animals,

which, undoubtedly beautiful and charismatic as they are,

and undoubtedly could be part of a wildlife tourism initiative -

but they will have impacts,

and sometimes they will create problems -

are we prepared to live alongside them?

And it's only really the people of Scotland who can make that decision.

40 miles north-west of Alladale, the Highlands meet the Atlantic.

Here lie many of the great sea bird colonies

that have made the Highlands world-famous.

Tens of thousands of pairs of birds

come here every spring and summer to breed.

Jostling for space to raise a family

along the dizzying ledges and cliff tops.

Paul Walton is Head of Habitats and Species for the RSPB,

and these vibrant communities are his special passion.

People can come to Scotland, they can come to the Highlands,

they can visit these incredible sea bird colonies, and it is,

to my mind, every bit as spectacular

as a visit to the Serengeti in Africa.

It really is one of the world's greatest wildlife spectacles.

Of all the birds that inhabit these extraordinary sea bird cities,

the guillemot is Paul's favourite.

Over 30,000 of these birds annually crowd the cliff ledges to breed.

One of largest concentrations of guillemots in Europe.

It's hard to imagine a more precarious place to raise a family.

Sea birds are important indicators of change

in the health of this marine world.

But despite their apparent abundance here, numbers are in decline.

The cause seems to link directly to climate change.

Sea birds are actually the end of a marine food chain,

and it seems to be that in recent decades, that food chain

has been undergoing some really quite profound changes.

Warm water plankton species, which aren't as rich in nutrients,

are taking over from the Arctic plankton species,

which were traditionally the food of the sand eels

and other fish which the sea birds eat.

And also we're seeing an overall reduction in the abundance

of that plankton that the fish eat.

And this seems to be having knock-on effects up the food chain.

You look out there at the ocean, and people tend to think, you know,

that's genuinely a wilderness, that's wild out there -

it's the last frontier.

But there is absolutely no doubt that human activity is having

a profound effect on the marine environment,

and on the wildlife that depends on it.

So, they're facing multiple pressures, and those pressures

are really beginning to show now, and have effects

on our sea bird populations, and driving them into decline,

and this is a global issue.

But while climate change remains an international problem,

there are local success stories for colonies like these in Scotland.

One area that proves that people can really make a difference

is in the idea of marine protected areas.

Now, we have protected areas on land, and we have done for decades.

In the marine environment, it's been much slower.

But we're making real progress now.

It remains to be seen how well they'll be managed -

that's a challenge for us all -

but it was public pressure that brought about this critical change,

and it is real progress.

Scotland has 30 marine protected areas,

supporting an abundance of wildlife.

With over 20 different whale and dolphin species,

the Highland coastline provides a rich habitat for cetaceans.

90 miles east of the sea bird colonies

lies a great funnel-shaped estuary called the Moray Firth.

WDC - Whale and Dolphin Conservation - are based here,

and run a programme called Shorewatch.

They work with 23 coastal communities,

aiming to engage them in protecting the marine environment.

Katie Dyke is their conservation officer.

We work with local communities, and we encourage them,

and engage with volunteers to look for whales and dolphins for us.

As you're scanning, you're just looking for splashes,

feeding birds, any break in the water,

any discontinuity in the water that you might think,

-"Ooh, there's something there."

-Yeah.

We analyse all this data so that we can better understand

the movements of whales and dolphins around the Scottish coastline,

and then we can use that to advise governments and developers

on how to protect the cetaceans that we have around Scotland.

Scotland actually has a really rich marine wildlife,

and a huge abundance of different marine mammals, and it probably

doesn't spring to mind to a lot of people, because I think when people

look at whales and dolphins,

they see tropical climates and warm waters,

and they think that's where they're going to see whales and dolphins,

where actually, Scotland is one of the best places to see whales

and dolphins, particularly from the shoreline.

These coastal waters are regularly visited by a resident population

of almost 200 bottlenose dolphins.

We've actually got the world's biggest bottlenose dolphin -

they're the most northern bottlenose dolphin of the world,

and basically they're the biggest, so, they're four metres long -

they're absolutely huge.

They're, kind of, relatives across the world,

so you've got bottlenose dolphin in California and Australia,

and they're only about two metres long.

So, our bottlenose dolphin are double the size.

Basically, they're kind of the fattest in the world, I think.

You know, they've got a lot of food around here.

They've got a lot of fatty fish to eat, they've got salmon,

and they basically have to stay nice and warm in this weather,

so they've got an extra layer of blubber.

This is a very special group of bottlenose dolphins -

the only surviving population in the North Sea.

They live on the very edge -

isolated and vulnerable.

And they share their home with people,

living alongside oil rigs, boats and busy harbours.

It's a world that's become noisier

and more polluted over the last century.

But they're holding on,

and each year they provide thousands of visitors

with an unforgettable wildlife-watching experience.

No-one knows the Moray Firth dolphins

better than Charlie Philips.

Like Katie, he's a field officer for WDC.

Charlie is cataloguing the unique markings

on each animal's dorsal fin.

CAMERA CLICKS

It means that we can keep tabs on what the population's doing

just through the power of photography.

We don't need to try and stick transmitters or markers

on individual dolphins,

because they already have individual markings on their dorsal fins,

caused naturally by themselves.

Charlie's got to know the pod so well,

he's given names to many of the individual dolphins.

When you're involved in studying them for any length of time,

you don't only begin to recognise them as individuals,

but recognise them as individual characters, too.

They're amazing.

I've spent 20 years watching and studying them

and photographing them and filming them, and every day is different.

There's no two days the same.

Charlie's favourite spot is Chanonry Point.

A shingle spit sticking straight out into the Moray Firth.

When the Atlantic salmon begin their spawning runs,

the dolphins gather here on a rising tide.

If you time it right, you can enjoy one of Scotland's

most extraordinary wildlife spectacles.

The bottlenose dolphins have figured out a method of hunting,

where if they wait for an incoming tide, as the tide rushes past the

tip of this peninsula, it creates tremendous whirlpools and eddies,

and the migratory salmon coming through this area seem to congregate

in one narrow spot, and the dolphins

basically wait on this tidal current,

almost like a supermarket conveyor belt bringing the food towards them.

Every now and again,

a dolphin will take a fish that it's not quite comfortable swallowing.

So, what it's got to do is, it's got to physically regurgitate it,

and then re-swallow it.

It can sometimes take a dolphin 45 minutes,

50 minutes to swallow a really large fish, but it's worth it,

because that huge packet of protein and nutrition -

it's worth spending the time putting that down your stomach,

because you don't know where you're going to get the next one from.

People won't protect what they don't understand,

and they won't watch what they don't know is there, and it's a really

unique opportunity that people have that live around this local area,

that there's dolphins on your doorstep, and you can go outside

and stand on the shoreline and watch these remarkable creatures.

The people of the Highlands are rediscovering

their connection to wildlife...

Anything feeding underneath them...

..proving that public engagement and positive action can,

and does, make a real difference.

This is the eagle picking up the fish.

If we can grab children's attention now, and get them excited

about nature now, then hopefully that will stay with them,

and it'll stay with them into adulthood,

and they are the people who are going to be looking after this

in 20, 30 years' time, so we really want to grab their attention now.

We see the Highlands as a bit of a unique area

within the whole of the UK.

It's seen as a wild place, and it is still a wild place,

and I really like being a part of it.

And I'm not sick of it yet, and I hope I never will be.

The Highlands - for me, it's home, it's where my ancestors come from.

It's a beautiful part of the world, it's got some fantastic nature,

but for me as an ecologist, I feel there's a job to be done.

You know, we've got to repair some of the damage to make this

an even better place for future generations to live.

The Highlands to me means freedom.

It means getting out there, in a clean place,

that's still got areas where you won't see another living soul

from morning to night.

But there's also pristine environments that we can enjoy, too.

If we do it carefully, then hopefully

those pristine environments will still be pristine in years to come.

It's a place that I'd never, ever want to leave.

The Highlands have inspired people for generations.

But keeping them wild and diverse is our responsibility.

Rebuilding a strong natural environment will benefit everyone.

If we can learn to respect and take responsibility for this place,

then the Highlands have every chance of staying wild and wonderful

for people and for animals.