Tuesday, 09 May 2023
In March, our peatland team visited sites managed by Coillte Nature, a not-for-profit branch of the Irish semi-state forestry company - Coillte, for a knowledge-sharing visit about restoration. Ian McKee, our Peatland Technical Advisor, and Tim Cockerill, a Peatland Restoration Forester based in North Highland, have been involved with the restoration of thousands of hectares of bog across Scotlan...
Tuesday, 02 May 2023
Guest blog by our native woodland ecologist, Richard Thompson, on a recent training tour of Scotland’s rainforest. Thirteen of our staff gathered around Plantlife’s Lichen and Bryophyte Advisor, Oliver Moore, to learn about the lichens, mosses and liverworts that make Scotland’s rainforests such special places. We were in the heart of rainforest country, at the head of Loch Sunart in Ard...
Tuesday, 25 April 2023
Spring is a great time to get out and enjoy new flowers and budding trees while you walk along our forest trails. So, pack your gear and a snack and get out into the trees. Ardentinny Cowal's longest sandy beach. Spring is a great time to head to the beach. Why not bring a picnic and explore Ardentinny’s network of woodland trails? The beach was used by the Royal Navy as a training...
Friday, 14 April 2023
Scots pine is our national tree and was once used to make ship masts. Its timber is strong and easy to work with making it a popular building product even today. It’s also a key pioneer species in our iconic Caledonian pine woods. Our nursery in Newton grows almost 2 million Scots pine a year. A portion of these saplings are used for native woodland restoration, while the rest is plante...
Thursday, 06 April 2023
Civil engineering students across Scotland are being urged to consider a career working in forests instead of urban environments. We are seeing a growing need for civil engineers and have vacancies for engineers to work in locations around Scotland. Last month we visited the University of Strathclyde to talk to engineering students and to give them an insight into a day on the job with our tea...
Monday, 06 March 2023
Every year we take on around 25 apprentices throughout our organisation, and all across Scotland. From Trees and Timber to Mechanical Engineering, and Procurement to Data Science, we're proud to offer apprenticeships across a wide variety of disciplines. For Scottish Apprenticeship Week 2023, we asked several of our apprentices about why they joined Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), and their expe...
Monday, 13 February 2023
Galloway is a great place to explore, with animal experiences to stunning walks and lochs. The Queen’s Way is a 17-mile scenic road that runs between New Galloway and Newton Stewart. Though the drive is lovely on its own, there are also plenty of stops to enjoy along the way. We put together a list of our favourite things to do in the forest park that should keep you busy for the whole da...
Tuesday, 07 February 2023
We are currently trialing an off-the-shelf GPS to find out whether it can help further increase timber quality by improving a key stage of tree planting. The excavator-mounted GPS device will be assessed during ground preparation work across forests in Dumfries and Galloway. Our team hopes this new system will help deliver consistent mounding spacing, ensuring a uniform establishment and u...
Wednesday, 01 February 2023
Scotland is home to a range of rare temperate rainforests. These are woodlands native to the west of Scotland which are made up of birch, hazel, ash, oak and pine trees. They're rich in biodiversity and capture vast amounts of carbon. Yet they're under threat. In the late eighteenth century Rhododendron ponticum (referred to simply as rhododendron in the rest of this blog) was intro...
Monday, 23 January 2023
Almost a hundred cameras were set up across the 60,000 hectares of land that makes up the Cairngorms Connect project area. The equipment captured over 3,000 images and videos of capercaillie, from April to October of 2022, giving us a more accurate assessment of their distribution and breeding success in the Highlands. Cairngorms Connect is a partnership working to enhance habitats, species and...
Tuesday, 17 January 2023
We recently hosted a volunteer event at Whitelee forest, just south of East Kilbride. This event was attended by volunteers from SRUC, ORCS (Oatridge Conservation Volunteers) and lichenologist John Douglass. Our staff are currently working with John to conduct surveys of some of the nationally significant lichen habitats within the Whitelee forest block. The day-long event involved practical lic...
Wednesday, 04 January 2023
Hazel coppicing was a traditional practice in lowland Britain and is often now carried out to support biodiversity that needs temporary open space in woodlands. However, this form of management can be disastrous for the biodiversity that inhabits Scotland’s rainforests. Hazel is a native broadleaf tree that typically grows as multiple stems from a single stump or ‘stool’. These long strai...
Thursday, 15 December 2022
Our green signs are a well-known sight across Scotland and welcome thousands of people to our forests every year. But have you ever wondered how they’re made? In this article, we take a trip to Border Signs and Graphics in Dumfries to find out. With over 300 forests across Scotland, numerous offices and hundreds of miles of off-road trails, we need a lot of signs. Recently that has been t...
Friday, 02 December 2022
This is the ‘Year of Stories’ and forests can be great places to learn about the past and often have some secrets of their own. We have put together a list of some of our favourite walking trails that have some amazing stories waiting for you to discover. Dunnottar Woods Lively community wood in the grounds of Dunnottar House. Just a short walk from Stonehaven, this wo...