“The Rare Mountain flowers of Ben Lawers: the history of their discovery and the threats they face” presented by Dan Watson, NTS Senior Nature Conservation Officer.

Ben Lawers is the best location in Britain for its mountain flora. This talk will explain why this is the case and tell the story of the early botanists who first discovered its riches. It will then move on to the more recent history of the pioneering monitoring programme established by the National Trust for Scotland. This has been running since 1980 and is the longest and most detailed dataset charting the fortunes of our rarest species. To bring us to the present, the talk concludes with the current status of these plants and their future prospects in a changing climate.

Dan Watson, NTS Senior Nature Conservation Officer: After a few years at Grey Mare’s Tail in the Moffat Hills, Dan moved to Killin to work as the National Trust for Scotland’s ecologist at Ben Lawers and Glencoe from 2010 to 2020.  Since then his role has been as one of the Trust’s three senior nature conservation officers.  He works with staff at their upland sites, from Grey Mare’s Tail in the south to Torridon in the north-west and Mar Lodge in the Cairngorms.