Thinking things through

One of my summer jobs has been doing some tractor maintenance tasks – not something I feel particularly confident with. However, practice will help this, so with some guidance and help from Jamie I spent a few hours changing oils and filters. In the evening I took a wander in the wood to restore my senses and remind myself why looking after the tractor is worthwhile. The woodland has been bursting with mushrooms of many kinds since the end of July. After a hot and dry June, July’s weather was rather cool and damp with an autumnal feel to it, and August wasn’t much better. The woodland fungi responded with a bumper crop. Ceps were abundant in our spruce woodland during July (though usually already decaying by the time I got to them) and more recently the local birch woodlands have been almost carpeted with chanterelles.

During the summer break I have been thinking through my plans for the woodland. My local friendly forestry contractor has come to forward out the timber from last winter so that I can now sell it. It would be handy to have my own means of forwarding timber for the future, when I will be taking out bigger quantities. It would mean I could forward out some at a time, rather than having to stack it up and wait for the big forwarder to come and take it all out at the end. A small timber trailer with a grab, which can be put behind the tractor, would also be a more appropriately sized machine for our woodland and its tracks than a huge forestry forwarder. I will have to consider whether a timber trailer for the tractor would be worth the investment and whether it would be practical on this site, where we have some steep sections of track. It will also require extending the network of tracks in the woodland, and this has been one of my main considerations for the coming winter.

The work done in the woodland so far required the construction of tracks at the western end of the wood to allow tractor access. Comar Wood is on such a steep hillside that building tracks is the only way to allow access for the tractor and winch that I have been using to extract the logs, and for the forwarder. Doing this at the western end near the house was a trial to see whether the approach could be extended to the central and eastern parts of the woodland. The tracks have worked well at the western end, opening up the dense stands of Sitka spruce and allowing access for management. It seems that extending the track network through the middle of the woodland would be a good idea. However, building even a small track across the steep slope will require substantial earthworks. This is a permanent change that will be imprinted on the landscape for a long time. While I will plan the track to avoid areas of remnant native woodland as much as possible, it will be impossible to avoid every single big birch tree. Therefore I need to be happy that it’s the best course of action.

Obviously there is the financial aspect to consider, but my main concern is to do what is best for the woodland and its inhabitants (within financial and practical limits). The question I need to satisfy myself with is whether the ground disturbance and loss of native trees associated with the track building is worth it for the benefits it will bring in allowing management of the spruce plantation, and whether there are any better alternatives.

The benefits of building a track are:

• It provides access for the tractor and winch, allowing sensitive, gradual management of the surrounding stands and means no heavy machinery damage to the rest of the ground.
• It opens up the woodland, allowing sunlight into the track corridors and adds to the diversity of micro-climates and habitats in the woodland.
• It provides an open corridor with the potential to connect areas of remnant native woodland that are currently islands within the spruce, allowing insects such as butterflies (and maybe many other organisms) to access a wider area of habitat where the spruce currently acts as a barrier.

If we don’t build the track, what are the alternative options for woodland management and timber extraction and how would they impact on the woodland?

• Skyline system (hooking logs onto tensioned cables and pulling them down the hill): The powerline and road at the bottom of the wood make this impractical.

• Use of large forestry forwarder with either hand felling or harvester: It would be difficult (and expensive) to do selective felling with this approach and areas of remnant native woodland are likely to be damaged. The machines would cause ground damage within stands and earthworks would still be required to allow the forwarder to take timber out across the hillside.

• Hand fell trees and leave to rot (a.k.a. fell to waste): The amount of lying wood would be extremely large and take decades to decay, making it difficult for certain plants to establish and impossible to replant. It would probably favour brambles as well as natural tree regeneration (likely including extensive spruce regeneration, which would be very difficult to control between all the felled stems). I wouldn’t be able to recoup costs from timber sales and it seems a little perverse not to make use of the timber resource. Alternatively, I suppose I could just kill all the spruce trees by ring-barking and leave to die and decay as standing dead wood.

• Do nothing – just let nature take its course: Native remnants would become ever more shaded as spruce trees grow taller, with further ground flora lost. Where spruce has self thinned, once the trees become larger and the lower branches are lost, the understorey will start to get more side light and mosses and ferns will start to establish more widely. Eventually spruce trees are likely to blow over in some areas, due to becoming increasingly tall and unstable, creating gaps for natural regeneration, but this is likely to be predominantly Sitka spruce.

If I want to proactively manage the woodland to help native ground flora re-establish, to make use of the timber resource and to regenerate a diverse and productive woodland, then I think the approach with tracks and extraction by winch is probably the course of action that will be the most effective with the least damage to the remnant native woodland. While it feels that constructing a track across the hillside is not an ideal thing to do to the land, it needs to be put into context. This is a remedial measure to try and help land that has become degraded due to the planting of the spruce in the 1980s. Given this decision, I have applied for the relevant permissions and I hope to start felling the new track corridor this autumn.

During the summer I have been updating the woodland GIS (Geographical Information System). This is computer-based mapping, which is handy for keeping track of what is going on and can be used to generate the maps that Scottish Forestry require when you apply for a felling licence. The map below shows where we have been working in the woodland so far, and where work is planned for the coming year. The tracks built back in 2019 are shown as a solid red line, with the thinning and felling work of last winter carried out adjacent to this. There is further thinning to be carried out this winter, as well as a 0.2 ha group of spruce that I plan to fell. The felling corridor for the new track cuts across the centre of the woodland and links with an existing track the follows the wayleave at the eastern end of the wood.

There is plenty to do. Putting in the track will be quite a job in itself, but this will provide access to the majority of the spruce stands in Comar Wood. We can then start thinning and felling in these areas and opening up around the many ancient woodland remnants, large and small, giving the land light, life and love.