| A combination of a weather-affected crop and competition from central and eastern Europe has ensured that cutting of reeds for thatching will cease within weeks.
The UK’s largest reed beds cover 2000 acres of the Tay’s Banks and for the past 13 years, have been harvested by the Tayreed Company.
In year’s past, they have been supplying material to thatchers throughout mainland Britain and America. However, with the company now winding down, cutters in Norfolk will become the last in the UK to work reed beds.
And that’s not great news for RSPB Scotland, which has a lease from the Crown Estate of 100 hectares of the reed bed, one of the UK’s scarcest habitats.
RSPB Scotland had hoped to work with Tayreed to maintain their reed beds, which provide a better habitat if regularly cut.
The reserve area currently takes in the less accessible and less economic sections of the reed bed, which cover about 400 hectares (1000 acres) of the upper estuary near Errol.
In many other parts of Britain, reed beds have been drained to open the land for agricultural use over many centuries and as a result, the Tay reed beds provide a scarce habitat.
In recent years, rare marsh harriers have started breeding in the reed bed and in winter it is home to bitterns. There are also large numbers of elusive water rails nesting among the reeds.
It is also one of the only areas in Scotland where bearded tits breed and also has a large population of reed buntings, a species whose numbers are declining elsewhere.
In late summer it attracts large numbers of migrating swallows and martins and is also used as a winter roost by starlings.
RSPB Scotland’s Tayside and Fife area manager Bruce Anderson admitted, “The end of the harvesting is not a great development for anybody. At the moment we are looking at options for continuing to cut reed on our reserve.”
Tayreed’s owner Graham Craig admitted the company had been winding down for some time and with a poor crop again, it had become clear they could not continue.
He said, “We have been producing less and less material and, with poor weather, the quality has been declining. While in the past we could maybe have gotten past that, this is no longer the case.
“We have competition from France, Turkey, Poland and Romania among others and, while there have always been reed imports, the Internet has really opened things up for them. Competition has become too strong.” |
