Homeward Bound

After one of the most exciting reintroduction projects of recent years, pine martens are back in the Forest of Dean

- Ben Hoare

The faint ‘blip blip blip’ is all we needed: FD09i is alive and well. To the three of us straining our ears, this signal on our little black box is as thrilling as a message beamed back from a distant space probe, though it has travelled only a couple of kilometres rather than many millions. “She’s probably lying up in this quiet valley,” explains Josie Bridges of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, pointing out an area of tight orange contours bunched around a stream on an OS Map. “That’s a good choice – she’s doing well. It’s where I expected her to be.”

A lot rests on the sleek shoulders of FD09, one of 18 adult pine martens set free this autumn in the Forest of Dean. Just a few weeks earlier, the elegant, bushy-tailed carnivore was roaming a forest in north-east Scotland. After being caught and driven south, she forms part of the advance guard in what is hoped will be her species’ triumphant recolonisation of this wild and beautiful corner of England, after an absence of probably at least 150 years.

I’m on a tour of the exciting project by Josie and the manager of the Wildlife Trust’s ‘Team Marten’, Dr Cat McNicol. Both are fresh from the translocation of pine martens from Scotland to Mid Wales (a Vincent Wildlife Trust scheme), where after five years, there are now 80–85 animals. The first Welsh-born kits were reported in 2017. Their latest marten mission, 90km to the south, aims to replicate that success.