An Ironic Bagpipes Project
THE RHODDIEPIPES O' LOCHALSH
by Ross Calderwood of Reraig
The Rhoddiepipes o' Lochalsh were created as part of a programme to raise public awareness of the evils of Rhododendron ponticum which is invading large expanses of Britain, threatening native biodiversity, especially in woodland (you know the sort of place, where shafts of sunlight patchily illuminate carpets of bluebells, stitchwort, soft brome and pignut beneath mighty oaks).
Few people are aware of the severity of this threat to the countryside and many quite understandably consider R. ponticum to be a very beautiful plant. They wrongly think it belongs in our landscape and don't consider it could be anything other than benign. Would you believe that organised tours trundle around rhododendron hotspots by the coach load during flowering time in May and June? R. ponticum was, in fact, introduced for horticultural purposes in the eighteenth century and is one of those terrible few garden plants that escaped and got completely out of hand [see Non-Native Species Secretariat].
The beautiful pink-blossomed beast occupies many, many gardens as well as the countryside into which it continues to escape and spread (some garden centres still have it for sale!). So our task has to be one of shifting public attitudes. The question is how to make people hate such a lovely plant, changing their delight into loathing, or we'll never be rid of it. That has to be ultimate goal: eradication.
Most people hate rats. A lot of people hate foxes. To a certain extent, people also hate mink, particularly those whose chickens have been exterminated by the little horror. One idea is to foster loathing of rhododendron in tandem with mink revulsion as both are subjected to well-publicised eradication projects such as are already in progress in Western Scotland. Many of us know how it is to admire R. ponticum whilst, at the same time, being aware of its behaviour as an ecological hazard and the absolute need to remove it from places where it is doing great harm. We have to persuade the majority to take the same well-informed attitude so that they give up their understandable but misguided sentimentality and willingly permit its extermination.
During the evolution of the Skye & Lochalsh Environment Forum's rhododendron project the mantra THINK PINK MINK, a slogan for rhododendron awareness, and I think the reader can now see what was behind the hatching of the Rhoddiepipes o' Lochalsh sub-project: the irony of making the villain play its own execution music wearing pink 'mink' clothing to foster association of the two pests in the public subconsciousness.