Distribution of pine martens in Scotland as determined by field survey

Method steps

1. From starting points, determined by estimating the breeding pine marten distribution in 1982 from the VWT survey, search areas were chosen at approximately 20 km intervals within suitable habitat. The search areas were approximately 4 - 5 km2, representative of the average area of a breeding marten territory within contiguous forest cover. If woodland was fragmented into blocks of less than 5 km2 , the search area was extended to up to 15 km2 to include at least 300 ha of woodland If no sign of marten was found then a further search was made at a 10 km interval. If again no signs were found then the search along that particular woodland corridor stopped. Within a chosen search area four separate tracks of 1 km in length were walked and both marten and fox scats collected. The tracks were ideally dirt or stone, i.e. not grass-covered, and chosen non-randomly within the search area to include intersections with streams or other tracks and to exclude areas with high vehicle or people use. Scats which could have been fox or marten but too old and weathered to be positively identified as either were recorded as 'unknown'; these are not included in the dataset. Only those scats which were obviously marten were collected. Other records of pine martens since 1990 were also collated.