Harvie-Brown (1881) has described the rapid extermination of the pine marten (Martes martes) from lowland Scotland before 1880. In the years following, the process continued in highland Scotland, probably mainly as a result of the increasing use of the 'gin' in rabbit trapping and game preservation. By 1900 marten were extremely scarce and, apart from a few survivors elsewhere, confined to north-west Scotland between Ardnamurchan and Cape Wrath. They remained rare until the 1920s. Between 1900 and 1907 most appeared to be in west Sutherland, for of twenty records published in Annals of Scottish Natural History in this period, seventeen animals were trapped between Ullapool and Scourie in Sutherland while two others were caught at Glenfinnan and a single male near Loch Striven in south Argyll.
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J. D. Lockie (1964) studied this question.