26 AUGUST 2019 FORESTRYJOURNAL.CO.UK
NEWS
LATEST UPDATE FROM THE GLOBAL FORESTRY INDUSTRY
IT turns out achieving 10,000 ha of tree
planting in Scotland in a single year is
surprisingly challenging and complex,
requiring the co-ordinated and sustained
efforts of thousands of forestry contractors,
landowners, foresters, specialist surveyors,
Scottish Forestry staff, government ministers
and consultees, as well a host of supply
chain businesses such as tree nurseries and
fencing suppliers.
Last year, this involved over 300 farmers,
estates, landowners and forestry investors
securing approval and funding for tree
planting in good time for them all to
implement their individual projects in 2018.
And Forest and Land Scotland planted
almost 1,000 ha, approaching 50 per cent
over their target.
In practical terms, as the regulator and
funder of woodland creation, Scottish
Forestry needs to have approved and
committed to almost twice this area and
number of projects. This is because most
people want to allow plenty of time to plan
and implement their planting schemes. This
creates a challenge when you are trying to
increase woodland creation delivery as,
while the approval process can be a barrier
to delivering the target, in two of the last
three years we approved around double the
area that was planted, and it has taken until
2018 for the level of planting to catch up.
While forestry is a long-term business,
I’m sure we’d all rather woodland
creation didn’t take quite as long, from
initial considerations to getting the trees
planted. However, it’s understandable that
it takes landowners some time to make a
decision about a forestry project, and that
most projects require some surveys and
assessments to help develop a planting
design that is both sympathetic to the
circumstances of the site and meets the
owner’s objectives. The new woodland
creation application process, launched
in Scotland in April 2018 following the
Mackinnon review, was designed jointly
with industry and consultees and aims to
help speed things up. However, most of
the projects planted in 2018 were already
approved before April 2018, so we have yet
to see the benefits of this new approach
fully feeding through to woodland creation
delivery.
Most Scottish Forestry staff spend
their time focussed on working with
and supporting agents and owners at an
individual project level. This ranges from
advising on the sensitivities on a site and
agreeing how these might be taken into
account, to dealing with complex objections
and helping to resolve significant concerns
about potential impact. Thankfully, inHow Scotland smashed its targets
Following the Scottish Government’s recent announcement that
the country’s annual tree-planting targets have been surpassed,
Brendan Callaghan, head of delivery and regions at ScottishForestry, offers an insight into how this has been made possible.
most cases we are able to resolve issues
and agree acceptable designs. It is worth
acknowledging that Scotland is now
delivering a healthy mix of new woodland
projects, with a roughly 60 per cent
productive and 40 per cent native split.
As well as woodland type, it is important
that we have a diversity of projects in
terms of size and ownership. So far we
have done quite well on this, with a good
balance between small farm and crofter
type schemes, which tend to cost more
per hectare planted, and larger, more
commercial schemes, which generally cost
less per hectare. This mix is important for a
number of reasons. We clearly need farmers
and small landowners to be carrying out
forestry projects as, without them, we are
unlikely to be able to plant 10,000 ha. We
are also keen to reduce the cultural divide
between farming and forestry. As the rural
economy changes over the coming years, it
will be increasingly important for farmers
to be able to access new opportunities
presented by integrating with forestry.
Achieving this balance does, however,
create some challenges, as ministers have
tasked us with delivering the woodland
creation target within the budget provided.
We need to ensure the mix of woodland
creation projects and average grant rate
of projects we support is affordable. In
practice, this doesn’t affect many projects,A map from Scottish Forestry shows where
grants for woodland creation went in 2018.A graph showing
FGS WC applications
and approvals over
the last four years.