Forum is impressed by Lewis enthusiasm for tree-planting
The Highlands and Islands Regional Forestry Forum, a group of 16 delegates who advise the Forestry Commission on policy and practice, visited the Isle of Lewis recently.
It was the first forum field visit to the island for 15 years and saw members touring new plantations and sites of interest.
They subsequently spoke of how impressed they were with the enthusiasm shown by islanders for creating new woodland.
The visitors were hosted by community wind farm charity Point and Sandwick Trust, which runs the Croft Woodland Project in partnership with Woodland Trust and has committed to creating 100 hectares of new woodland on croft ground in the Western Isles by 2020.
Point and Sandwick Trust (PST) has funded Croft Woodlands Project officer Viv Halcrow, who is based in the PST office although her work covers the whole of the Outer Hebrides.
Viv’s job is to give practical help and advice on tree planting and the funding application process in a bid to overcome the barriers that exist, such as limited knowledge and excessive bureaucracy.
A report which went to PST’s AGM in November showed that progress on the Western Isles Croft Woodland Project had so far been impressive.
At that point, 42,410 trees had been planted on the islands since the project began in 2016, with five SRDP (Scottish Rural Development Programme) plantations going into the ground that season alone, with 1,400 to 7,200 trees in each, totalling 21,000 hectares.
Smaller-scale planting is also happening, with applicants helped by funding from Woodland Trust’s MOREwoods scheme.
There were more than 34 of these MOREwoods schemes, with between 300 and 1,350 trees in each scheme and more than 10,640 trees altogether.
There have been hundreds of inquiries and croft visits – and some islanders, who had been planting trees out of their own initiative, were subsequently coming to Viv for advice.
The forestry forum’s visit to Lewis took place on May 16 and 17, with the visitors welcomed by PST general manager Donald John MacSween.
There were a number of talks, including an introduction to trees in the Western Isles by John Risby, conservator Highlands and Islands with Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS), and Donald Macleod, an FCS woodland officer with responsibility for the Western Isles, Skye and Lochalsh and Wester Ross.
Donald John and Viv also gave a talk on the Western Isles Croft Woodland Project.
Field visits followed. The forum visited two recently planted croft woodlands schemes in Point and went to Lochs the next day to see a plantation in Leurbost, where 10 hectares have been planted by the common grazings committee, and another community woodland at Sgoil nan Loch. Calum MacKinnon, one of the men involved in the Leurbost planting project, said the trees had made a ‘massive difference’ to their environment.
There are five regional forestry forums in Scotland, which replace the previous regional advisory committees as regional advisory bodies to FCS.
The Highlands and Islands forum is chaired by Dr Michael Foxley.
John Risby said the local enthusiasm was clear to see.
‘People are wanting to see some trees in townships. There’s lots of potential, lots of enthusiasm – that’s what we’re picking up.’
The challenge, he said, was in ‘helping that enthusiasm’ and ‘getting the right trees’.
He added: ‘If you don’t get the right trees, they won’t grow and that’s why we’re so positive about Viv’s role and we’re putting a little bit of funding towards it.’
He said forestry in the Western Isles was different to forestry in most other areas as conditions were ‘very harsh for trying to grow trees’.
However, methods have evolved to combat this, for instance, grouping them closer together, avoiding wet or windy ground and carefully selecting the trees in the first place.
Dr Foxley said their aim was to find out what was happening locally, to learn what people’s aspirations were and to find ways to help these aspirations become reality.
He hailed Viv’s role in the Western Isles Croft Woodland Project as ‘fantastic, absolutely fantastic – we could do with more Vivs’.