Hello, goodbye: Castaway sails into splendid isolation on rock in the Atlantic just as Scots prepare to enjoy easing of lockdown
Lockdown is at last easing as Scots begin to emerge into the sunshine in the hope of, sometime soon, meeting family and friends.
Apart, that is, from Conor McKinney, who has just left the mainland for six months of isolation on a storm-lashed rock in the middle of the Atlantic.
The conservationist landed on St Kilda last week to begin his work to protect the biodiversity of one of the world’s most unique wildlife locations.
“It’s bittersweet,” he said. “My career has been about the protection of special sites and they don’t come much more special than St Kilda. It’s a land of superlatives: the most remote
and most isolated, with the steepest cliffs and the richest diversity of bird life.
“I’m balancing that with the fact I’ll be away from home for six months when, because of Covid, I haven’t seen my family in a year as it is. I think they understand that it’s the nature of my work,” McKinney said.
“My grandparents are enchanted by the idea of St Kilda; my granda remembers his days working in Shetland fondly and my granny would spend her summers on Inishsirrer, a now uninhabited island off Donegal. We’ll have a good auld session when I’m home in October!”
Heading off to St Kilda for six months is probably the closest you can get to a real-life desert island scenario, and there were a few items that McKinney was sure to take on his trip.
Music is likely to play a part in keeping up morale, and one of the first things he packed was a portable speaker.
“I know from spending a month there in 2019 how important music can be. I got into trad band Skippinish because of the Uist boys I was working with. We’ll hopefully get a couple of sing-songs going!
“I’ve got my Kindle too, and a pack of cards. Whenever the rain and storms blow in, it’s about keeping things going and those wee moments spent with people are a bit of normality and really important to keeping spirits up.”
A dual World Heritage site owned by the National Trust for Scotland, St Kilda is home to nearly one million seabirds, including the UK’s largest colony of Atlantic puffins and a substantial number of the world’s storm petrels. Nesting there too are species like fulmars, gannets, shags and Manx shearwaters. All of them would suffer drastically if an invasive species like rats were to get on the island, and it’s McKinney’s job to prevent that happening.
He studied environmental science at the University of Stirling before later completing a masters in ecological management and conservation biology. He became an expert on island biosecurity in his native Northern Ireland.
McKinney said: “My job will be on the island, making sure the biosecurity management plan is followed and, when the boat comes in with construction materials, monitoring the traps on the boat to make sure nothing has been nibbling away. If there is anything there the boat will be sent back to the mainland.”
By the summer, up to 30 people will be at work on the island. McKinney will be directing themonhowtheycantakeas much care as possible to prevent damage to the ecosystem.
“In the summer we’ll find puffin fledglings getting distracted by the lights,” he said. “They’re a bit like feathery moths, they’ll fly towards them and ground themselves. Their numbers are in drastic decline so it’s about making sure we do all we can so that as many survive as possible.”
St Kilda’s human history is just as fascinating as the wildlife, with the last fulltime inhabitants evacuated in August 1930 after petitioning to be relocated due to the unsustainable living conditions.
McKinney will be updating his Twitter followers on @wildlifeni, as well as appearing on the BBC’s Costing the Earth podcast.
“St Kilda’s not the sort of place you can get to easily, there’s a three-year waiting list with the National Trust for Scotland and it’s costly,” he said. “It gives me something to do when not doing the day job, and means that I can bring life on St Kilda to people and get people to connect with the islands.”