Tuesday, 18 August 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland’s team in Aberdeenshire has been giving nature a hand by re-spacing trees that have, through natural regeneration, started to repopulate a recently felled site. The cleared site - in Gartly Forest – had begun to be re-seeded naturally from neighbouring trees, which although a welcome process, can result in germinated seeds growing too closely together…or too...
Wednesday, 12 August 2020
A washed out road in the South Loch Avich area threatened to derail essential harvesting work – until Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) civil engineers recycled a bridge! Essential harvesting work has been carried out throughout lockdown in order to provide the timber supplies - used to make pallets, wood fuel pellets and face masks – that have supported the national COVID-19 effort. &nb...
Monday, 10 August 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland is putting its shoulder to the wheel to help the national effort to control the spread of Phytophthora ramorum by carrying out surveys around the affected larch sites that it manages and across its significant areas of larch not known to be infected. Phytophthora ramorum primarily kills larch trees and with no known cure, the only remedy to stop its further sprea...
Tuesday, 04 August 2020
The constant supply of timber required to support the national COVID-19 effort has seen Forestry and Land Scotland’s civil engineering team hard at work to keep harvesting work on track. Harvesting was one of the few forestry activities permitted during lockdown because the timber produced was used to make pallets (for carrying essential goods around the country), protective face masks for fron...
Friday, 31 July 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland’s (FLS) work to restore an Aberdeenshire peatland is already paying dividends with the successful establishment of a white carpet of bog cotton – and the arrival on site of peewits (lapwings) and curlews – species that are in serious decline across Scotland. Increases in other bird species - such as stonechats, skylarks, and meadow pipits – have also ...
Monday, 20 July 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland’s team at the Newton Tree Nursery (near Elgin) have caught up with their lockdown-delayed work and completed their seed sowing operations that will ensure a supply of future trees. When the Nursery closed at the beginning of lockdown, there were real concerns over the long-term impact on tree supply, on Scotland’s £1 billion forestry sector and consequently on Scot...
Thursday, 16 July 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland has launched an exciting funding opportunity for budding entrepreneurs and innovators - to come up with ways to better analyse and measure forest trees. A better understanding of the properties and quality of the timber in different areas of forest will improve the efficiency of harvesting operations. As well as making it easier to identify forest blocks that offer a ...
Tuesday, 14 July 2020
As Scotland’s tourism sector officially re-starts under the Scottish Government’s Phase 3 route map measures, Forestry and Land Scotland has pulled out all the stops to support the sector’s recovery and opened its visitor facilities across the country. After a Herculean effort to carry out all of the necessary health and safety checks, 95 percent of car parks, almost all visitor centres and...
Friday, 10 July 2020
The Forestry and Land Scotland team behind the steep ground felling along the Loch Ness-side A82 is keeping its hand in as the programme is adjusted after COVID-19 lockdown. No felling will take place beside the A82 this year because time will now be given over to catching up on the design and installation of the safety fences needed to keep road users safe in the unlikely event of any mishap.&nb...
Wednesday, 08 July 2020
With the COVID-19 five mile travel restriction now lifted, Forestry and Land Scotland has been joined by land managers, environmental experts and campaigners in calling on the Scottish public to help prevent a repeat of the recent shameful scenes of littering. FLS has called for more responsible behaviour – and for members of the public to remember that while many car parks and beauty spot...
Monday, 06 July 2020
A Scottish Government Civ Tech Challenge launched by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) has helped create an award winning business that could benefit forestry around the world. The FLS challenge – to find a way of improving the chances of tree seed surviving and germinating to produce the seedlings that will sustain the ongoing success of Scotland’s £1bn forestry sector – met with a huge re...
Friday, 03 July 2020
Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing has branded the decision by Camping in the Forest (CiTF) to keep all their campsites closed for the remainder of the year as “totally unacceptable”. Scottish Ministers own Scotland’s national forests and land, with Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) managing it on their behalf, with the three campsites leased to CiTF, a business owned by the Camping and Ca...