On 19th December 2023 the Scottish Government announced that Scottish Forestry’s grant budget would be cut by £32m or 41% for the year 2024/25. Almost a year later the Scottish Government, in its budget for 2025/26 announced ion 4th December, is proposing to increase spending on forestry grants next year from £45,367,000 to £53,000,000 a 16.8% increase with the specific objective of supporting delivery of “climate change targets through woodland creation and tree planting and to restore and protect Scotland’s Atlantic Rainforest”.
As I have been documenting on parkswatch (see here, here and here) the forestry grant system is achieving the opposite of what is ostensibly intended and releasing more carbon into the atmosphere through the destruction of soils. It has also been harming wildlife while pump priming financial speculation in land. The last thing we need at present, therefore, is for the forestry grants budget to be increased before it is fundamentally reformed as this will cause more harm. It would be far better, as Dave Morris is advocating (see here), for it to be suspended for a year to enable a rethink.
For those concerned about the so-called Atlantic Rainforest, beneath the entries for forestry on the Level 4 budget tables (see here under the Rural Affairs tab) there is a section on natural resources. Besides peatland restoration that includes a budget line for Atlantic Rainforest restoration:
Why there are two lines in the Scottish Government budget allocating money for Atlantic Rainforest Restoration is unclear but whatever money is currently included under Woodland Grants for this purpose could simply be moved to Natural Resources so long as it wasn’t used to plant trees.
The rest of the Scottish Forestry grant money which has not been contractually committed in advance should be re-allocated for the next financial year to reducing deer numbers wherever possible to two or less per square kilometre. This would enable woodland expansion to happen naturally, stop carbon being released unnecessarily from soils and reduce the damage being done to wildlife through killer deer fences.
Part of the money could go to Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), whose income the Scottish Government proposed to cut next year, to get deer numbers on its land under proper control. This would enable it to stop erecting new damaging deer fences as it is proposing to do in Glen Prosen (subject of a forthcoming blog), remove the need for planting trees in the Greater Trossachs Forest where it has adopted an eventual target of 5 deer per square kilometre with the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park and satisfy those landowning interests who attribute some of their difficulties in controlling deer to the numbers on FLS land.
The rest of the forestry grant money and the staff who administer it should be transferred/seconded to NatureScot to allocate to deer managers who are serious about reducing deer numbers but don’t have the funds to pay for this themselves (i.e any grants should be means tested).
Should FLS and NatureScot doubt they could spend the £53m in this way for a year, there are other woodland related objectives on which the money could be spent, such as the removal of invasive non-native species, including sitka spruce, from areas of native woodland which a couple of readers have advocated in response to my most recent posts
These or similar radical proposals are achievable politically. In order to get the proposed budget for 2025/26 passed the SNP Scottish Government needs to get support from other political parties, most probably either the Greens or the LibDems. All that is needed therefore is for these two parties to commit to ending the destruction being caused by the forestry grants system – why would the Greens support expenditure that is directly and unnecessarily increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere – and make any support for next year’s budget conditional on a full review of the forestry grants scheme with a temporary re-allocation of funds until this happens.
If you are sympathetic to this argument please consider lobbying your constituency and list MSPs.
The risk in all this is that you destroy the woodland creation capacity we currently have, including tree nurseries, and in a way that we never get it back again. No-one will ever trust ScotGov again and they wont invest in any longer term equipment or training. Most farms/ estates would only commit to reductions in deer densities if funding for that could be guaranteed for the longer term, potentially 20 years or more. One year means nothing. Agency staff have been trying to re- design a better grant scheme, integrating deer management, since 2020 or so, and are still miles away from that, with little chance of success. Sawmills would take the message that they are not wanted, and stop investing. The Forestry Grant Scheme does not need to be closed down to review it, that can be done in parallel. If people are lobbying MSPs, then a proper FGS review in 2025/26 is an easier ask, with a fixed deadline, and then make the NEXT year’s funding dependent upon that being delivered. That would apply the necessary pressure.. You dont need to destroy everything to achieve constructive change.
There are myriad facets of the land monopoly racket that is rural Scotland and this is yet another example. Is it the fault of people living in Drumchapel, Westerhailes, Blackhill or Saughton Mains that deer numbers have risen to the level they are at or has it something to do with the 421 corporate/ individual private owners who own half of Scotland’s private land and how they manage their property? (NB down from 432 from previous estimates despite 2 so-called land reform acts).
We need a radical paradigm shift facilitated by direct legislation and fiscal measures to remove the current oligarchy which as Joseph Stalin reminds from his extensive experience, is not likely to give up its power voluntarily. That paradigm should include the collection of AGR http://www.slrg.scot and the conversion of Quangos such as FLS into national SERVICE agencies.
There are problems with some specific woodland creation schemes but your proposals would make things much worse, not better. The Forestry Grant Scheme covers not only large and small woodland creation projects but also wide range of woodland planning and management operations: shutting this down for a year would be hugely damaging not just to nursery sector (as per VC comments) but also to community woodlands across Scotland.
Deer are a huge issue but this needs systemic land reform, not shuffling of agency budgets (and it’s hard to imagine NatureScot doing a complete volte-face and taking on landowners at a national scale). And re your comments on FLS culling: SWT estimate FLS deliver a third of the national cull despite managing only 8% of the land (https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/2024/07/the-problem-with-deer/) – some landowners will always find excuses but more usually complaining about “their” deer being shot (https://www.scotsman.com/news/landowner-threatens-to-sue-over-deer-slaughter-1711728)
Just a couple of corrections to your first paragraph. It should say £45,367,000 and £53,000,000.
I think you also meant ‘objective’ rather than ‘objection’.
Another great blog, thanks.
Brian
Thanks so much for the corrections, have made, Nick