Handmade woodlands

Working as a volunteer for the Heritage Lottery Fund supported Action for Mountain Woodlands project I recently spent a few hours hand mounding and planting with Ardross primary school. It was years since I had done any tree planting and it was very pleasantly nostalgic. It was also extremely encouraging to see young children both taking care to do the job well, and taking great interest in what they were doing and I would like to congratulate them all on a job well done.

Hand mounding is both expensive and hard work. The development of excavator mounding had a profound impact on woodland establishment and has encouraged adoption of variable stocking densities, more intimate mixing of open ground and planted areas. This enhances the ability to create and manage woodlands that better reflect site capacity and have greater potential to generate multiple outputs.
Until the advent of excavator mounding such woodlands were often created by hand, and it is probable that some woodlands always will be eg in the montane zone. However it is important that all woodlands show a cost benefit balance, and preferably a net gain. Although much depends on how costs and benefits are defined and valued there is no doubt that keeping woodland creation and management on a sound economic footing and minimising unnecessary impacts makes this easier to achieve. But how do we do it?

In what circumstances does hand mounding or motor manual harvesting become cost effective in the fullest sense. Vulnerability to windthrow is often cited as a reason for limiting the adoption of alternatives to large scale clear felling. In what circumstances does the effect of soil compaction in exacerbating this risk justify use of small scale extraction equipment, timber chutes or skylines instead of conventional forwarders?

If forestry is to make best use of available sites and deliver the multiple benefits expected of it there will be an important role for small scale, and even handmade approaches to woodland establishment and management. These techniques need to be accepted as part of the foresters toolkit and incorporated where appropriate, rather than being tolerated as amateurish, fringe activities.