In mid-February (see here) I described how many of the trees planted by BrewDog, as part of the Phase I creation of its Lost Forest, had died and how they appeared to be investing little, if any, of their own money in the whole disastrous project. A week after the post I received a response from Scottish Forestry to an information request I had submitted in December about the number of trees that had died, any related correspondence with BrewDog or their agents and the amount of forestry grant they had disbursed to date.
The response (see here) stated Scottish Forestry had paid BrewDog £690,986.90 to date and confirmed that a very high proportion of the planted trees had died:
Most of BrewDog’s Phase 1 Forest was planted with Scots pine and birch, trees which I had previously shown were naturally regenerating all over the site. The area of native broadleaf planting, almost all of which is now dead, was much smaller:
According to Scottish Forestry’s first information response, therefore, of the trees BrewDog had planted to create their Lost Forest a minimum of 92,456 Scots Pine and 42,712 oak and other broadleaves had died by last September.
From the areas I had seen, however, I thought the 50-56% estimate for Scots Pine mortality was on the low side and I also wondered why Scottish Forestry had not estimated mortality among the birch, which made up just over half of all the trees planted. I therefore asked Scottish Forestry for any further information they held on what had happened.
The response, 2024-00390478 Nick Kempe reply, which I received on 19th March, clarified four staff had visited the site on 7th September and the primary purpose of the visit was to ensure the fences which had been erected and the trees which had been planted were in accordance with Scottish Forestry’s contract. Unfortunately, a computer error in Scottish Forestry’s favour means much of the data relating to the inspection had been lost:
Despite that unhappy accident and the decision to bin one of the field maps some of the additional information that was supplied – and all credit to the Scottish Forestry staff who recorded this – is very revealing:
This shows in three out of the five small plots of birch planting that were sampled “about half were dead”. If that was replicated across the whole site it would mean at least 60,000 of BrewDog’s birch have died. To add to BrewDog’s woes, in four out of the five birch plots “many of the planted trees had been browsed”. At the same time in two of those plots – and in the two sample plots where Scots Pine had been planted – there was extensive natural regeneration of birch (and in one “a few” Scots pine established through natural regeneration). One could hardly find a better illustration of the failures of Scottish Forestry’s grant system.
First, BrewDog and Scottish Woodlands had justified planting trees at Kinrara on the basis that there was limited scope for natural regeneration:
“Some regeneration is occurring on site, though with browsing pressure at moderate levels, none of this is successfully establishing. Current seedling counts in the areas marked for natural regeneration is less than 50 trees per hectare on average at heights less than 10cm with heavy browsing damage.” (FGS WIG – Habitats and Species Supporting Information).
In my view that claim was totally unfounded and there was evidence that significant natural regeneration was being established across the site before it was fenced (see here). Scottish Forestry, however, chose to accept this claim and the associated plan, which set aside limited areas for natural regeneration, instead of getting their own staff to check what was happening on the ground. Scottish Forestry’s own assessors have now shown that naturally regenerated trees are doing far better than planted trees in the very areas where it was claimed natural regeneration wouldn’t work due to a lack of seed source etc. Proof that there was indeed a “Lost Forest” waiting to return and all that was needed to make this happen was to keep deer numbers low.
Instead, Scottish Forestry and BrewDog decided to plant a new forest, financed with large sums of public money, with disastrous consequences for nature (see here) and carbon emissions (here).
Second, Scottish Forestry’s assessors have demonstrated that forking out significant amounts of public money to BrewDog to protect the planted trees with deer fencing round the site hasn’t worked:
According to the Lost Forest plan which forms part of the Woodland Grant contract:
“Herbivore control within the fenced enclosure will endeavour to keep these areas free of deer, though low levels of roe deer and hare pressure is expected. Types of herbivores and details about control methods are included in the Woodland Creation Deer Management Plan and its appendices”.
It would appear that after trapping deer within the fence, BrewDog has failed to cull them as promised, while the fence itself may have kept out predators such as foxes which could have helped keep hare numbers under control.
Third, because nursery grown trees are far more nutritious than their naturally regenerating counterparts or the surrounding vegetation, having been grown with fertiliser, deer and hare browse them preferentially. This, together with the mounding and the drought last summer, helps explain why so many planted birch have died, despite the generally small number of deer, while the natural regeneration is flourishing.
To add to the disaster, correspondence released in the first FOI response also revealed that Scottish Forestry staff had found that a significant number of the trees planted by BrewDog were from “an unsuitable” seed source and because of that initially decided 28,150 needed to be removed:
The explanation for this is that considerable effort has been devoted in the last 30 years to maintaining genetic diversity among certain species of native trees and as a result Scotland has been divided into seed zones with planted trees being sourced from local seed zones. This was reflected in Scottish Forestry’s contract for the Lost Forest:
“All stock will be sourced from local seed material (Native Seed Zone 201, Indigenous Scots pine seed zone ‘Northeast’ or ‘East Central’) where this is available. If locally seed sourced stock is not available, alternative nearby seed zones will be discussed and agreed in advance with Scottish Forestry. Planting will be carried out in line with current guidance including Bulletin 112.”
Further emails reveal that instead of enforcing this requirement Scottish Forestry then capitulated and decided that the majority of trees from the wrong seed zones would be allowed to remain:
Why bother with seed zones at all then? The underlying problem here is that Scottish Forestry’s only real interest is in meeting the Scottish Government’s planting targets and they will allow no other policy to get in the way of this.
Two statements made by Scottish Forestry in their information responses are revealing in this respect:
“It might be useful to clarify the purpose of the admin inspection that was carried out. It is to ensure that the capital items claimed are in place and that the boundaries of the different options are as per the contract. A few plots were put in to establish the mounding and planting spacing to check compliance with the option requirements.”
Comment: the reason staff are required to inspect new woodland planting is purely administrative, to ensure planting targets have been met and that the various elements of the forestry grant have been spent as agreed. Consideration of ecological matters, such as the impact the planting may have had on soils, play no part in the inspection process.
“It may also be useful to note that the cost of purchasing replacement trees and for replanting to replace any losses will fall to the landowner and not the public purse. SF will expect full stocking at establishment (year 5) as per the grant contract and a further inspection will normally be undertaken at that point to confirm the grant conditions have been met and validate the grant payment.”
Comment. While the forestry grants contract formally hands responsibility for meeting “stocking densities” onto the grant recipient after the initial planting there are serious questions to be asked about the extent to which this protects the public interst. From the information provided, it appears that Scottish Forestry will continue to disburse annual installments of the grant for the next four years whether BrewDog has taken any action to replace the dead trees, replace those from inappropriate seed zones or cull deer as required by the Deer Management Plan. All that matters to Scottish Forestry is tree density in five years time and after that they absolve themselves of all responsibility for what happens to native woodland planted with public money.
Having lost or binned most of the records from the assessment visit, it will be very difficult for Scottish Forestry to distinguish between naturally regenerated and planted trees in five years time and that will likely let BrewDog off the hook for significant parts of the site.
This whole system appears designed to enable Scottish Forestry to count any planted tree as contributing to their planting targets, whether or not the tree has survived or has to be pulled up because it is from the wrong seed source,and ignores natural regeneration in favour of vested interests in the forestry industry. It is to the credit of the Scottish Forestry staff involved in the inspection that they made some attempt to describe all the dead trees and natural regeneration at Kinrara, despite not being required to do so. However, they are powerless to change this ecologically destructive system of publicly financed greenwashing.
The legal challenge to Scottish Forestry at Stobo Hope – an opportunity for change
Although Phase 1 of the Lost Forest is in the Cairngorms National Park and adjacent to Craigellachie National Nature Reserve, neither the Cairngorms National Park Authority nor NatureScot opposed it publicly. Now the extent of the tree planting disaster has been officially confirmed by Scottish Forestry, it is not too late for either body to up their game and call for a review of the Woodland Grants Scheme.
It says something about the Scottish Government’s control over public authorities and the voluntary sector, however, that the most likely source of challenge to Scottish Forestry is likely to come from local communities and organisations which do not depend on government for funding. There has been much local concern on Speyside about the Lost Forest, which is in walking distance of Aviemore, but so far no organised opposition such as is now emerging in the Scottish Borders.
At Stobo Hope, west of Peebles, Scottish Forestry has awarded a £2m grant to a “trust” based in a tax haven to plant Sitka Spruce on an area of moorland which is designated a National Scenic Area.
There is now a local campaign which has produced an excellent video about the proposals (see here) and has opened a crowdfunder (see here) to raise funds to challenge Scottish Forestry’s decision through a judicial review. With Scottish Forestry having decided an Environmental Impact Assessment was not required – contrary to the advice of NatureScot – and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, no less, having recently published an excellent report calling for an end to public subsidies for commercial forestry (see here), any court action would appear to have a reasonable chance of success and could help force Scottish Ministers to reform the whole Scottish Forestry grants system.
The land at Stobo Hope, like Kinrara, may have been affected by intensive grouse moor management but the way to restore nature and help lock up carbon from the atmosphere is not, as the video shows, to dig it up and plant it with trees. I would hope that readers who can afford to do so will consider supporting the Stobo crowdfunder.
There are two very obvious ways in which the Forestry Grant Scheme could be changed.
One is that the average grant paid for planting is c £3500- 5000 per hectare all- in, while the grant for regeneration is £300, and there is an insistence that regeneration is all GPS ed and each bit given an individual FID number. Put simply, this is why we see so few regeneration schemes in Scotland. If you want to change this, pay more for regeneration, even if you take this from the main woodland planting/ creation budget.
Secondly, 1600 trees per ha is effectively a plantation. Even if it is native species, it is still a plantation. You could plant or regenerate a smaller number of trees per ha (5-600). This would give you a mixture of trees and open space, but it will still look like and feel like a woodland…. just a more open and variable one, almost certainly supporting higher biodiversity, especially of ground vegetation and insects and butterflies etc. It also has the advantage of reducing the cost per hectare, meaning you can plant or regenerate a greater area of woodland with the same budget.
If you are interested in native woodlands, then planting or regenerating fewer trees per ha but doing more hectares overall is a big win-win-win for everyone.
I’d really like to read this but have struggled to because of accessibility issues – grey on white is almost impossible to read
Yes, agree with this. Simple black font please.
And me too, please!
All, thanks for the comments. I had had similar comments before and tried to fix without success and thought the issue was with my theme which I had chosen because it was much easier to set up than WordPress’s themes. Anyway, you have prompted me to look again and I have now found I had missed the most obvious and simplest solution. I hope the post is now easier to read. The solution needs to be applied to each post individually but where I provide links back to posts in future I will try to remember to change them. Nick
I also find the site content EXCELLENT but, alas, visually totally unreadable!
I suggest viewers may wish to install the browser extension called Clearly Reader.
This will make the text visible (!) and has many other extremely useful features – including read aloud, export to pdf or epub, copy to clipboard, etc. I use the free version.
Duncan I changed the text yesterday but I think that may have been a contributory factor to the site crashing!
On allargue estate in upper strathdon they actually planted half the required amount of trees for the grant scheme and used the rest of the grant money to build roads etc and then they won the Purdie gun awards for the best forestry and estate awards in 2014 if you Google it up and I posess the paper work to prove their fraudulent grant application then the forestry commission did an onsite inspection of the site and it failed the inspection due to lack of tree numbers again i have paperwork to prove that this was the case which makes a fool of the purdie awards and the whole grant scheme
I’m reading this on a Samsung Galaxy S7+ tablet and although I agree it would be clearer if the font were black…it’s still perfectly readable.
It’s a great tablet for reading difficult web page text.
I simply wish to thank watchscotland for this important and excellent work. I think this needs to be more widely known.
Good point let’s not get hung up on back ground colours and focus on the issues, that is the tax payers money getting squandered by big business. Boycott brew dog and all land owners involved
Excellent report. These problems were known about 40 years ago when the Native Pinewood scheme was launched. The Forestry sector has never accepted natural regeneration as it does not fit their accounting model. Forestry grant policy would be easy to reform …no cultivation, no fences on all land in LCF classes 6 and 7. Around 25 years ago I published an academic paper in Ecological Economics that demonstrated that natural regeneration was more cost-effective than planting when restarting native woodland. No one from Scottish Forestry took any interest.
They don’t care about the environment it’s the money they are interested in. It’s terrible that deer “management” needs to be done. Great publicity shooting deer who by no fault of their own were fenced in! What else are these poor animals supposed to eat?
Complete codswallop. Staff work in forestry because they care about the environment. If they were in it for money tgey wouldn’t work for sf but a private company. And Terri le to manage deer. Ffs stupid comment. His else can you manage a species. Put up a perfectly good fence yet thru still find a way. So shoot em. It doesn’t make money for tourists ya eejiot.
Hi Bob, I am not quite sure what point you were trying to make about staff working in Scottish Forestry or the fence, my post was criticising the system not the staff working on the frontline who – as far as one can tell from the limited records in this case – appeared to have been concerned about the planting failure. In terms of managing deer I would agree there is no such thing as “a perfectly good fence”, they all fail, and we should be shooting/hunting deer as they do on the continent and where forestry is carried out without any need for deer fences
Can you translate this you xxxxxx
Donr know Brewdog. But if establishing native woodland fencing out the deer, maybe scarification and or muirburn to create a seed bed, is a well proven technique. Birch is a pioneer species and Scots Pine will continue to seed in if seed sources nearby.
Stobo – Appears a completely different matter. There is a lot of misunderstanding about Spruce forest and biodiversity. 1st it is found across the northern hemisphere as the climax forest on glacial till and grey soils, preceded by shorter lived pioneer species such as Birch, Aspen, Willow which it grows thru. Apart from biodiversity on edges and internal open space, the canopy variability provides more habitat and biodiversity than impoverished sheep walk. It is far more productive/ grows many times faster / carbon fixing than native broadleaves which are not the climax tree. The requirement I suggest is to incorporate the pioneer species component, in particular fast growing Aspen, into Spruce forestry. This is now being put into effect on replanting in a useful Spruce forest near Newton Stewart. If anyone wants to visit I can go into this in detail. The Aspen planted in late 90s have held their own in v fast growing Spruce. Birch is being incorporated in the edges as drifts. In pockets of poorly drained, wet ground water areas are being created with open space and brdlvs. My tel no is 07753744317
Forestry planted tree density are important if the intention is to create a viable woodland area that can last throughout the rotation length. However, if the intention is to create a native woodland then not only does it need to be variable density with open space, with a multi aged crop but a Forestry Grant scheme that can fund this type of woodland.
That is, accept natural regen when available, fence and protect against browsers and provide funds during establishment over an extended period ( 5 years is nowhere near long enough) to ensure that the completed woodland is suitable to be called a Native Woodland type complete with flora and fauna. Density of trees should be less important than the creation of this special type of woodland.
The last time I was involved in a native tree natural regeneration scheme, the Scottish Government’s rules for grant support required the area to have at least 1,100 trees per Hectare evenly spread across the identified natural regeneration area within 5 years.
If this was not achieved then the area had to be planted.
Only once in my 50+ years as a forester have I achieved this aim and even then one had to extrapolate the numbers of actual trees on the ground to give a representation what they equated to spread evenly across the whole site – this is where forestry is an art as well as a science !
The problem is that politicians and there civil servants are only interested in the next 5 years for obvious reasons and until that changes the 5 year cycle will not be broken.
Depending on a myriad of variables, in my experience it can take anywhere from between 5 to 20 years to achieve ‘satisfactory’ natural regeneration.
As a tax payer I have sympathy with the views expressed about value for money – but does that not also apply to ferries and new railways ?!!!
I have experience working in tree farms and nurseries, and had an interesting chat with a gentleman who runs a tree planting business of the sort fulfilling such contracts as would have actually done this work recently. I asked about expectations around the numbers if trees planted per worker and renumeration.
I asked because my recent experience at a tree nursery in East Lothian had left me wondering a bit about survival rates in the wild, given that there seemed to be some fairly significant losses occurring at all stages prior to final planting.
Anyway the point is that if you pay workers 10p to plant a tree, there is very little investment by that worker to do any more than the minimum required to be able to describe a tree as ‘planted’ in the most basic sense.
Planting Sitka Spruce is mistake. It is like stocking rainbow trout in the river Tweed instead salmon. You should use generically local pine trees ,birch and Hazel to make beginning of natural forest. Have look on mixed forestry in east Europe.
I find it shocking that a public body such as Scottish Forestry can ignore, or be so wilfully ignorant, of basic good forestry practice. Naturally regenerated trees do better because they are part of the mycorrhizal fungal root system which nurtures trees in so many vital ways. Planted trees do not just tap into this, so they are vulnerable to any stresses. It seems that Scottish Forestry needs to go back to school.
Well said. Root intertwined “conversation” between trees to warn of disease or browser threats among the advantages of natural regeneration.
I too am very grateful for Averil’s comment. As awareness has grown of the importance of fungal networks in the soil for trees it is complete madness to dig, dollop and drive heavy vehicles over and through those soils. It is something that I have been meaning to write about on Parkswatch
Planting Sitka spruce is well known to attract/help/feed the Great spruce bark beetle, which in turn requires spraying. A sorry cycle. Plant Native.
I walked over the planted area a few days ago and right enough over 50% of last years planting has died. Poor plants?. bad or late plantring?, or adverse weather conditions. ?. Possibly a combination of all three. There were healthy SP transplants on site for replanting so hopefully this year will be more successful. People talk about natural regeneration but for that you need seed trees and there are virtually none on the site. I am not a fan of carbon offsetitng but what Brewdog are doing is a great improvement on the degraded grouse moor that existed before
So did you not see any of the natural regeneration on site? There are also quite sufficient pine and birch on the site to enable natural regeneration of these two species which are the main ones being planted. Wind, birds, animals, water, all carry seed without the need for planting which is how woodland colonised after the ice age. And actually the whole site was regenerating naturally before the planting because muirburn had stopped. BrewDog did not need to do anything but wait for natural regeneration and cull red deer.
I think some of the comments here are a little over-critical of Scottish Forestry. Brewdog should take the greater share of blame here, for perhaps not managing planting well, and very definitely for failing to cull fenced in deer, which is always likely to cause serious problems. Surely the key control measure is that SF will check stocking density at year 5, and if Brewdog have failed they could ultimately have to repay some of the grant. There were a lot of good ideas and intentions here; it’s a shame if those all go to waste. It could still be turned around.
I don’t think there is enough criticism of Scottish Forestry, Andrew.
They are the Regulator, Grant provider and Policy owner for Forestry, responsible among other things for achieving a Scottish Government target for planting trees.
Brewdog applied for Grants to plant trees, they’re then encouraged by Scottish Forestry as part of a herbivore management plan, to build fences and cull deer, both of which they done.
Scottish Forestry have the ability to attach conditions to Grant awards, to ensure recipients undertake certain actions or meet certain requirements.
If they’ve failed to do so, or people on here are unhappy about BrewDog’s action, take it up with Scottish Forestry.
Victor nailed it in the first comment, if natural regeneration is so much more preferable to planting, all Scottish Forestry need to do is address the imbalance in Grants for the two.
There is an important element being missed here – all grant funding paid can be reclaimed with interest added if the scheme is deemed to have failed.. It is a rare occurrence as generally a poor initial survival rate as evidenced is rectified at the landowners expense, but it has happened in the past.
Last couple of years have been difficult for newly planted trees with hot drying winds in May/ June causing higher than normal failures. Planting timing is crucial – if there are transplants waiting to be planted at this time of year I’d be questioning how long they’ve been out there and why wasnt it done a month ago rather than starting now at the tail end of the season.
“ There is an important element being missed here” -Not by Me, Ali.
However the reality is that any reclaim of grant monies is unlikely to be successful if the operating plan has been followed, and most, including you also accept that the “weather” has played its part.
I share your concerns about the replanting timing, but was heartened to read that 50000 replants took place in the first two weeks of this month, and another 30000 added to this in the past week. So it’s clear they’re not starting now, and are making progress.
Preparatory works appears to have already started at Stobo Hope – marking out of planned tracks and I think an excavator was in place, but no soil turned yet,
On the other side of Hammer Head/Trahenna, up from Broughton Place, a massive amount of industrial planting is almost complete – incredibly dense mounding and planting of what looks like Sitka to my inexpert eye with a thin fringe of broadleaves. Access paths and the hillside are a mess as one might expect when an excavator’s been driven over every inch of it.
John Buchan Way is looking pretty pointless at this point – a huge amount of it will be through/beside these industrial plantations.