Exploring forests with a forester

On an unexpectedly snowy January day, fourteen Wild Reekians took to the Pentlands at Bonaly in the company of Andrew Heald.

Andrew is a commercial forester with an interest in sustainability. From a beginning managing Welsh woodlands, he has worked in Finland, Uruguay, Ghana, and elsewhere on projects including World Wildlife Fund's "New Generation Plantations" project.

"Unhappy Sitka", outcompeted by heather for
nitrogen in the soil.

"Happy Sitka", although suffering from
aphid damage due to mild winters.

Due to the time of year we focused on evergreen trees, looking at the role natives Holly, Juniper, Yew and Scots pine play in the landscape, and identifying commercial species Lodgepole pine, Larch (curiously, a deciduous conifer), and Sitka spruce.

Treeless uplands are exposed! And result in spatey, flood-prone rivers.

We learned about changing fashions in managing woodlands. The early nineteenth-century "policy" woodlands of Bonaly were extended by the Edinburgh lawyer and early environmentalist Henry Cockburn who purchased it in 1811. The plantations at Bonaly reservoir were late 1980s examples of 'insensitive' twentieth-century commercial planting. Some very newly-planted mixed woodland showed the challenge of establishing new woods on exposed Scottish hillsides, and protecting it from the ravages of aphids, voles, rabbits, squirrels, sheep and deer. The old 1920s plantations had matured, and were being managed in more modern ways, better for wildlife, people and trees: thinning allowed light in to encourage woodland-floor plants like wood sorrel; fallen and standing deadwood provided food and habitats for birds, insects and fungus; and huge, mature Sitkas acted as "frame trees", protecting their younger neighbours from wind and soil erosion.

Frame trees, forest floors, and fallen deadwood.

"We massacre every town tree that comes in a mason's way. There was no Scotch city more strikingly graced by trees than Edinburgh. used to be. How well the ridge of the old town was set off by a bank of elms that ran along the front of James' Court. The old aristocratic gardens of the Canongate were crowded with trees. There were several on the Calton Hill: seven, not ill grown, on its dry summit. All Leith Walk and Lauriston was fully set with wood. Moray Place might have been richly decorated with old and respectable trees. But they were all murdered, on the usual pretence of adjusting levels and removing obstructions. No apology is thought necessary for murdering a tree; many for preserving it." From Henry Cockburn's "Memorials of his Time"

We learned to look at the forest through the eyes of a forester: looking for the straight timber that would suit the sawmill, and the ease of access to harvest it easily. But we also saw it through the eyes of the environmentalist: looking at the place of trees in a landscape, mitigating floods, providing habitat for wildlife, and soothing the soul of the exploring human - as long as you don't mind falling in the occasional muddy ditch.

You can follow Andrew Heald on twitter at @andyheald. 

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Hug a Sitka.