Friday, 04 September 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland has announced that the Lodge Forest Visitor, near Aberfoyle, will re-open on Saturday after a two day closure. The Visitor Centre in Queen Elizabeth Forest Park was closed on Thursday to effect a full deep clean after a member of the café team tested positive for Coronavirus. Sue Morris, FLS visitor services manager in the area, said; “The Lodge was closed on Wedne...
Monday, 31 August 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland’s environment team is celebrating their role in yet another successful species reintroduction programme. Working in support of the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation, FLS assisted in the sourcing and capture of one of the seven white tailed sea eagle chicks that Roy and his team re-homed in the Isle of Wight. The young bird - collected under a Scottish Natural Heritage l...
Monday, 24 August 2020
One of Aberfoyle’s best known tourist attractions and a hub for visitors to the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park has reached the grand age of 60! Forestry and Land Scotland’s Lodge Forest visitor centre first opened its doors in August 1960 as David Marshall Lodge – named after the 1950s chairman of the Carnegie UK Trust, which helped fund the construction of the lodge. Originally intende...
Friday, 21 August 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland is attracting attention from across the forestry sector as it revolutionises tree nursery practices through new a mechanised process at the ‘grass roots’ level. FLS has been trialling a new ‘TreeTape’ technology that will help increase the number of viable seedlings grown from seed at Newton tree nursery near Elgin. This in turn will help ensure the continuity ...
Wednesday, 19 August 2020
Forestry and Land Scotland’s team in Perthshire is getting ready to establish a new seed stand that in decades to come will help sustain Scotland’s contribution to mitigating the Climate emergency – and conserve some remnant Caledonian Pine woods. An existing Scots Pine seed stand already exists at Keillour but although this is still producing seeds, the more mature trees require more...
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 ...