The Woodland Carbon Code (WCC) describes itself (see here) as ‘the UK’s government-backed standard for creating new woodlands that generate high-integrity carbon credits’ and is managed by Scottish Forestry. The WCC is based on a number of key assumptions which are not explicitly stated: the first is that since trees take CO2 out of the…
Tag: scottish forestry
On Saturday I walked up White Coomb in the Borders through the Carrifran Wildwood, the native wood creation project that puts others to shame. Descending from Firthhope Rig I was quite surprised to find this Sitka sapling at about 750m in altitude. Usually once Sitka have reached this size they are very difficult to uproot…
Fit adult red deer normally jump over stock fences such as this with ease but accidents happen and become more likely over the winter months as they weaken through lack of food. Part 3 of the recently passed Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2026 starts by setting out the aims and purposes of deer management. Two…
A few days after they had provided me with a copy of the contract for the Creag Bhalg woodland creation scheme near Kingussie (see here), Scottish Forestry responded to my complaint about the locked pedestrian gates there. After their Conservator for the Highlands and Islands, John Risby, had confirmed their contract with Balavil covered these…
On 19th March I wrote to both Scottish Forestry and the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA) about the locked gates (see here) in the deer fencing around the Balavil Estate’s Creag Bhalg woodland creation scheme. I had asked Scottish Forestry for a copy of their contract with Balavil, which I received yesterday, and requested they withhold…
The woodland visible around the top of Creag Bheag was funded under the Woodland Grant Scheme 3 in 1999. Twenty years later the Balavil Estate engaged Trees for Life Woodland Services to design a new area of native woodland on the estate, around Creag Bhalg. This is about 3 km north east of Kingussie, was…
My most recent post on Abrdn’s mismanagement of the Far Ralia estate for carbon offsetting purposes (see here) included this photograph of a new stock fence erected alongside an old deer fence and across this gate making it unusable. I then notified the responsible manager at Abrdn, who was not aware the gate had been…
I have been meaning to write about the Altan native woodland scheme, just to the south west of Loch Glascarnoch, since I through it in 2018 and 2021. Many hillwalkers will have used the track through the scheme which provides the quickest access to the eastern end of the Fannichs and the Corbett, Beinn Liath…
This is the first in a series of posts which looks at what forestry grants to large landowners to plant trees has done for native woodland in Scotland based mainly on the evidence I have seen on the ground over the last few years. It provides lessons for our National Parks, not least because of…
[This post was updated and corrected 12/2/26 to reflect the fact that the costs of creating new plantations are not fully met by Scottish Forestry grants] On Thursday Oxygen Conservation announced (see here) that they have been awarded £3.3m in forestry grants to plant a large chunk of the Invergeldie Estate north of Comrie. …
In Scotland we need to restore our native woodland cover. The Government agrees and wants to see 18,000 ha of new woodland created per annum, primarily through native woodland expansion. Not especially ambitious for an emergency, but perhaps overly ambitious for our antiquated grant system which has, except for the year 2023/24, delivered less than…
A video from July 2024 of the site can be seen here. Readers may be familiar with Stobo (see here and here) perhaps one of Scotland’s most environmentally destructive forestry schemes this century. In February 2024, Scottish Forestry awarded a £2 million taxpayer funded contract to the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund, a ‘registered collective investment…
One wonders how much further the price of the Abrdn Property Income Trust (APIT) will drop from the current asking price of offers over £6.9m once prospective buyers become aware sheep are grazing among the newly created native woodland plantation at Far Ralia (see here)? As Drennan Watson has observed, once planted trees start to…
In response to my blog post of 10th October (see here) on ‘The near total destruction of a Twinflower population at Creag Bheithe Bheag in the Cairngorms National Park. What went wrong, and what lessons might be learnt for the future?’ I received replies from the CEO of the Cairngorms National Park Authority (CNPA), Scottish Forestry (SF)…
The Abrdn Property Income Trust (APIT) is now marketing Far Ralia for offers over £6.9m (see here), which is less than the recent £8m valuation, less than the £7.5m they bought it for five years ago and considerably less than the £12m they were asking for 15 months ago (see here). Deduct from the new…
A couple of weeks ago I e-biked with Dave Morris over to look at Phase 2 of BrewDog’s Lost Forest which I had not visited since planting started there in 2024 – the year after over 50% of the trees planted in Phase I had died. Having shown that Oxygen Conservation’s claims that the Lost…
Introduction It has been well covered in the media recently that the craft beer company BrewDog have sold on their “Lost Forest” at Kinrara Estate, which stretches from Speyside into the Monadliath, things not having worked out for them in the way that they might have hoped. It is actually quite astonishing that a relatively…
BrewDog’s sale of Kinrara, the estate near Aviemore which it purchased for £8,800,000 in December 2020, and the announcement by Oxygen Conservation earlier this week that it had purchased it (they have not disclosed the sum) were both sadly entirely predictable. The short explanation is BrewDog financial balloon has well and truly burst while Oxygen…
[Post updated to include data from most recent Forest Research statistices and corrected 27th September]. Eighteen months ago I wrote a critical post (see here) about how Scottish Forestry is not only funding companies like BrewDog (see here) and Abrdn (see here) to plant trees, they have also been subsidising the production of trees by…
For my first few days walking the Grande Traversata dell Alpe (GTA) – I started from the Nufenenpass on 24th July – it was cloudy, windy and periodically wet, the forests were predominantly composed of conifers and the mountain flowers still out While some flowers were past their best others were in full bloom. As…
It is over six months since I blogged about how the crisis facing commercial forestry interests at Stobo Hope in the Borders (see here). Since then a successful judicial review by the Stobo Residents Action Group has forced Scottish Forestry, the public agency responsible for regulating forestry and distributing grants, to cancel the £2m grant…
In December abrdn told the Scotsman that they had made mistakes with their carbon offsetting tree planting scheme at Far Ralia, the land they had bought for £6.5m in 2021 and are now trying to sell. While admitting these mistakes included “basic things around designing woodlands and certain processes” they did not explain what they…
Following my post on Forest and Land Scotland’s Larch Removal Plan in Strathyre, which would decimate the forest and its wildlife (see here), the local community has set up a campaign to stop the destruction. In the words of a local person: “most of the villagers and local businesses had no idea this mass tree…
Forest and Land Scotland (FLS)’s landholding Strathyre, which runs north from Callander to Balquhidder, provides perhaps the best example of mixed woodland in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park. It is also one of the few near examples we have in Scotland to Continuous Cover Forestry (see here for explanation). Among the main species…
On 19th March the Herald revealed (see here) that Scottish Forestry, having suspended grant payments to BrewDog after it was revealed many of the trees in the Lost Forest had died, has now paid them £1.2m and agreed to pay a further £1.5m for the project. This post takes another look at the scandal in the…