Wednesday, 13 March 2024
We recently provided logs the length of a double decker bus to a specialist carpenter for a full-scale log house.
The house is being constructed by Bedrock Buildings Ltd. and will be moved to a plot of land in Tomich where it will be rebuilt in early summer.
The finished structure will use a total of 52 massive, 100-year-old Douglas fir logs.
The logs were harvested by high...
Thursday, 15 February 2024
The low stone walls and earthen banks of a post-medieval township were recently discovered in Glen Brittle Forest on the Isle of Skye during an environmental check ahead of harvesting.
Likely dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, the township comprises a range of houses, byres, barns and corn-drying kilns. The buildings were located within a mature conifer plantation of predominantly Sitka spr...
Monday, 05 February 2024
5 to 11 February marks Children's Mental Health Week, an opportunity to start conversations and raise awareness. To mark this important week, we're taking a look at some of the work being done by our community rangers to support young people's mental health.
Spending time outdoors can boost your mood, lower stress levels and improve overall mental (and physical) health. That’s why our community...
Thursday, 01 February 2024
Our nursery at Newton is a hub for innovation. We’re currently redesigning the nursery to modernise the infrastructure and ensure we can produce trees for our long-term planting goals.
To make sure we’re working as efficiently as possible, our teams at Newton trial new methods and technologies every year. Some of this technology is based on existing agricultural machinery and is being adapted...
Monday, 22 January 2024
To celebrate our archaeological learning resource The Bare Bones being nominated in the Current Archaeology Awards 2024 ‘Research Project of the Year’ category, we thought that we would shine a light on another intriguing type of Neolithic chambered cairn – the Bargrennan cairn.
Several of these cairns can be found on Scotland’s national forests and land, including the White Cairn in Gall...
Thursday, 18 January 2024
Our CivTech challenge to improve wildlife management has reached the next stage.
Earlier this year we asked for help to solve two problems we face with deer management. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough interest in one of the challenges but we are excited to move forward with challenge 9.3. This looks at how we can help wildlife rangers identify the exact location of every animal larger t...
Tuesday, 26 December 2023
Choosing a real tree for the holidays can be a great, sustainable option. But did you know that how you dispose of your tree afterwards can make a big difference to its carbon footprint?
If you’ve got a pot-grown tree and the space to do so, you could try planting it out in the garden or repotting it into a bigger container and leaving it outside until next year. If your tree has been cut,...
Thursday, 21 December 2023
Allan MacDougall has been awarded the Imperial Service Medal for 48 years of dedicated service. Allan was awarded the medal at Glenmore Forest Park after retiring last year. Working in Glenmore since the 1980s, he has welcomed thousands of visitors, sharing his incredible knowledge of the place.
Allan was brought up in Strathmashie and joined the Forestry Commission on 15 July 1974, when h...
Wednesday, 13 December 2023
A new glasshouse will soon be added to our nursery near Elgin. The building will be around the size of two football pitches and capable of growing up to 19 million trees a year.
This exciting addition is part of a major modernisation project that hopes to start in 2024. The project will increase our self-sufficiency and see our nursery provide more trees to support Scotland’s ambitious tree p...
Thursday, 07 December 2023
The broch of Caisteal Grugaig is a unique structural ecological niche situated in an area of amazing Atlantic Rainforest.
Could one of the finest brochs in Scotland be a home to biodiversity, just as it was once home to an Iron Age family?
The broch of Caisteal Grugaig sits in the Atlantic Rainforest zone, which runs along the west coast of Scotland, and is surrounded by a rainforest habitat ric...
Thursday, 23 November 2023
In November 1923, only four years after the establishment of the Forestry Commission, Glenmore was purchased from the Duke of Gordon. 2023 marks 100 years of public ownership of this much-loved place. Its transformation during this time can be seen as a miniature history of public forestry.
The early years
After the First World War, Britain's timber supply was at an all-time low. A steady...
Monday, 20 November 2023
Glenmore was purchased from the Duke of Gordon in 1923, only four years after our predecessor, the Forestry Commission, was established. Since then, the area has been a hive for recreation, conservation and forestry.
Over the past 30 years we’ve been working to expand the native Scots pine forest through native regeneration and deer management. Together with our National Park partners, were now...
Thursday, 16 November 2023
Is the humble field vole the Cairngorms' most important mammal? As unassuming as they might seem, field voles play a key part in the food chain and their numbers can have a huge impact on protected species like capercaillie.
That's why, twice a year in autumn and spring, ecologists survey voles in the Cairngorms Connect project area. The project area covers over 60,000 hectares of the national pa...
Thursday, 02 November 2023
The stone circle of Na Clachan Aoraidh – the ‘Stones of Worship’ – is set high on the limestone ridge of Cnoc na Craoibhe above Loch Tummel.
Grid reference: NN 8386 6200
The site is an unusual ‘four poster’ stone circle – a square arrangement of four large stones on a low stone-built platform. It was probably built in the Late Bronze Age, about 3000 years ago.
Writing of Na Clac...