Our steering committee meets to discuss Ronay Island plans

In April 2025 we held our first steering committee meeting at the Grimsay community centre with local stakeholders. A diverse mix of people attended, each with their own unique connection to Ronay Island, to discuss our long term vision, our short term goals, and the challenges and opportunities we face.

Having the input from local businesses and individuals is absolutely essential to our project and we wouldn’t be in the position we are today without the support of the group. While this was the first official meeting together, we’ve been working closely with each of the members since we first became the custodians of Ronay back in 2023.

The steering committee includes the owners of local accommodation and tourism business Langass Lodge, the operators of local wildlife tour company Lady Anne Wildlife Cruises, the founder of Love Gaelic language courses, a specialist in woodland conservation, and other interested parties.

We covered a lot of ground in the meeting, discussing potential uses for the house on Ronay Island, opportunities to partner with other local businesses, and the need for zoned areas to be carefully managed to respect the resident white tailed and golden eagles on the island.

Our team explained the baselining surveys that are currently underway on Ronay in partnership with RePlanet. These surveys measure five distinct indicators of biodiversity in the environment, and will give us a clear idea of the measures we need to take to set the island up to be resilient for the future. The first of the surveys are now underway, and the second round of surveys will occur later in the summer.

As a challenge, we asked the group to guess how many birds, bees, beetles and plants we would find in our surveys. Only time will tell who guessed the closest numbers, and the winner will be announced at the end of our second round of surveying at the end of summer 2025.