Chance Converstions

I received an e-mail yesterday inviting HB to join a new EU project about Forest Management Planning. I was immediately interested because this is an area which I think has been largely overlooked for many years and which is becoming increasingly important.

Whatever your view of the future there is no doubt that our forest resource must develop resilience to climate change and a capacity to adapt to changing economic, social and policy demands on it.

The private sector forest resource is now dominant and still largely dependent on state aid so it will need to ensure that it supports a range of Scottish Government and EU policy aspirations or it may find that grant support is less forthcoming in future. This is easier said than done.

To support policy effectively private sector forest managers need a toolkit to help them evaluate potentially conflicting objectives. The first two items conspicuous by their absence from the tool box are cost effective multipurpose inventory and production forecasting tools. The key words are “cost effective”. Accuracy is also desirable, but if a tool is neither cost effective nor accessible it will not be used and an approximately accurate dataset is far more use than no data at all.
Even when we know what we have got, there are still a lot of complex tradeoffs to consider. Take the SG aspiration to expand tree cover by 10,000 ha a year. Delivering this target will require careful balancing of open land and woodland habitat and species conservation priorities, and evaluation of net carbon balances in comparison with other land uses and raw material supply chains.

Adaptability to changing markets is another key issue. Scottish forestry is already balancing supply to energy markets with supply to more traditional, potentially higher value markets and, as haulage costs rise, and concern about timber miles grows it will be important to balance options for local and distant added value procurement chains. It takes a diverse woodland to supply diverse markets.

Incorporating diversity into the resource could improve resilience to catastrophic events, be they weather, pest, disease or fire based. However decisions about structural and species diversity must be based on an informed risk assessment. Guidance on silvicultural systems, species choice and provenance choice is vital as is ensuring the availability of appropriate planting material.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I phoned the project developer and told him I thought the idea a good one and he said “yes, it all comes from a discussion we had last year”. So you never can tell what might come of a chance conversation!