Grantham Expedition Group

About this Challenge Team

In the summer of 2024, we will be hiking a section of the Cape Wrath trail on the northwestern coast of Scotland without any single-use plastics, new kit, or private travel, and will be contributing to scientific projects in the area while raising funds for climate charities.

Conducting an expedition entirely sustainably is one side of the challenge, but we will also be contributing to as many citizen science projects as we can in the area. The Cape Wrath trail crosses many areas of scientific interest, national parks, and nature reserves, making our route a perfect opportunity to sample across a large region. 

Re-wilding Scotland has many projects on the west coast. One project is their red squirrel monitoring project that requires annual surveying. Most of their data is from the more populated Southern part of Scotland, and from casual sightings. We will participate by monitoring the red squirrel populations we observe, especially in the more northern parts of our expedition.

In their Restoring Temperate Rainforest project, Mossy Earth are conducting annual site survey in the summers of 2024 and 2025 to identify regenerating non-native trees; monitor natural regeneration in an annual woodland herbivore impact assessment (WHIA); and record species recovery. They are currently pioneering a mountain birch restoration project, a part of which involves locating remaining fragments of mountain birch and collecting seeds from them to be sprouted at nurseries. While we would be passing through at the wrong time of year to collect seeds, we will pinpoint the coordinates of any mountain birch trees we find. Additionally, they are running a restoration project at the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, monitoring wildlife and planting native trees, as well as their long-term rewilding and aspen projects.

All of these projects are along the planned route and can be integrated into the project.

Moving in the microbiological realm, there are several citizen science projects that we could contribute to. SPUN (Society for the Protection of Underground Networks), map mycorrhizal fungal communities on a global scale and advocate for their protection. We will be collecting soil samples to contribute to their cause. Similarly, there are many eDNA projects that are in need of samples from more remote regions. For example, Biodiversity Genomics Europe (BGE) relies on the invaluable help of an army of citizen scientists to help us build the map of European biodiversity.

Project Outputs:

1.       Successful expedition to a remote UK region.
2.       List of recommendations that could be considered in planning stages of any expedition, trip, or fieldwork to improve sustainability.
3.       Contribution(s) to citizen science projects.
4.       Contribution to the scientific literature – we aim to produce an opinion piece on the importance of these issues in science.
5.       Short film including project planning, preparation, workshops and expedition.

Team Members

Javier Sánchez Fernández (Cohort 9)
Joseph Ovwemuvwose (Cohort 9)
Kaya Jumbe (Cohort 10)
Louis Cohen (Cohort 10)
Martha Day (Cohort 10)
Nell Pates (Cohort 10)
Rhys Preston-Allen (Cohort 10)
Rose Gooda (Cohort 10)
Samantha Jenkins (Cohort 10)