Chamber and committees

Communities for Diverse Forestry submission 2 March 2022

PE1812/Z - Protect Scotland's remaining ancient, native and semi-native woodlands and woodland floors

Community councils and other groups increasingly contact us because they feel disenfranchised by rapid afforestation without meaningful consultation. Residents in areas impacted by rapid forest expansion are concerned by the lack of species diversity from both a resilience and biodiversity point of view, as well as broader social concerns around current land use policy. We regularly hear that more consideration should be given to nearby existing native woodland habitats when assessing new woodland creation proposals. Some express concerns re self-seeded Sitka spruce establishing out with the curtilage of forest boundaries.  

Volunteers often suffer from a lack of knowledge about how the system works. We are campaigning to publish a set of guidelines that guide a community through the process, step-by-step and let them know how, when, and why they can engage. While we have produced a set of freely available guidelines, we would prefer to see a Charter endorsed by the industry, Scottish Forestry, and grassroots community groups like us. We are aware that work is ongoing to establish guidelines but strongly believe a greater degree of urgency is required, given the current volume of proposals. This information should be sent to communities at the earliest stage of an application, i.e. at the scoping phase, with an additional walk-through of the process if required and, ideally, a joint site visit. The onus would be on the applicant to show that this process occurred before submitting the scheme to Scottish Forestry.