A TINY island off the Wester Ross coast is to be gifted to the local community.
Isle Martin will be handed over to a trust, set up by residents in the surrounding West Highlands, because the wild-life charity which owns it has little use for it.
The 388-acre, deserted outcrop near Ullapool was gifted to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1980 by the late Monica Goldsmith to be run as a bird sanctuary.
Now the conservation group wants to give the island, which lies at the mouth of Loch Broom, to the local community to look after because it is too far from its other reserves to be economically managed.
The Isle Martin Steering Group has been set up to look at plans for restoring the remaining cottages and running the island as a crofting museum or a marine study centre for schoolchildren.
The island, which is named after the historic Church of St Martin there, was home to about 100 people in its heyday, around 200 years ago, as a fish-curing station. It has been uninhabited for several decades. The success of the fishing industry there led to the growth of Ullapool as the major herring port in the area.
Isle Martin, which is half a mile off the coast, has a small colony of fulmars, shags, and guillemots, a pair of rare red throated divers, and a few pairs of arctic terns and twites.
Steering group chairman, local councillor David Green, said: ''This is a wonderful opportunity to develop this island as a real resource for the Loch Broom area and attract tourism.
''There will have to be some investment to restore the remaining cottages and the jetty. It would be good to think that maybe some day soon people could start living there again.''
A delegation from the group will visit Isle Martin on Saturday to survey its buildings and land.
The RSPB has placed two conditions on the handover. The island must be run by a charitable trust and any developments there must preserve its wildlife.
The trust will include local residents, members of the Highland Council, and Oriole Goldsmith, the former owner's daughter.
The RSPB will continue to monitor the island and will offer advice on its development, but will not be a trustee.
An RSPB spokesman said: ''We are constantly reviewing our priorities in Scotland and we have concluded that the RSPB is no longer the most appropriate body to look after Isle Martin.
''It is not a site of outstanding ornithological significance and is too far from our other properties to be managed efficiently.
''We feel that the local community would be able to run the island every bit as well, if not better, than we can.''
The RSPB owns 38 bird reserves in Scotland and manages 19 sanctuaries in trust for private and public owners.
qMillionaire financier Sir James Goldsmith has become the latest celebrity to snub the residents of Eigg in their bid to buy the island.
One of the few has been comedian Eddie Izzard, who donated #50.
The islanders have now raised #1,434,000.
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