A personal view of Quinag
This is the text of a reading on Sunday 13th October 2024 at the first Lochinver Book Festival promoted by the Lochinver Bookshop. The author, Romany Garnett, was recently made redundant, together with nearly a third of their staff, by the John Muir Trust. She served them for nine years in a variety of posts, including Quinag Conservation Officer and Land Manager (North Region), and acquired in that time a unique knowledge of the land around Quinag. One of her responsibilities was the painstaking monitoring each year of the impact of browsing by red deer on the regeneration of native trees such as downy birch, holly and rowan.
You can read her work at the link below where it is part of our ‘Creative Writing’ page:
Quinag; severed from the landscape by Romany Garnett
It has been our pleasure to work with Romany on Quinag during much of her time with the John Muir Trust. Some of our joint excursions have featured as stories on the Field Club website, as will be the one mentioned above. All had their interest, but this was truly magical.
We have long admired her dedication to her work. Her experience fuelled an ability to communicate her enthusiasm for this special part of Assynt to a wide variety of people, young and old, local and from further afield.
We applaud her courage in putting into words her feelings about this sorry episode. It is our personal view* that the recent actions of the John Muir Trust constitute a spectacular failure in their duty of care for their staff and the wildlife and landscape they purport to cherish.
*Ian M. Evans and Gwen Richards