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Around the time of the last Scottish Parliamentary elections, the Scottish Crofting Federation (SCF – one of our partners in the Woodland Crofts Partnership) issued a call for the next Scottish Government – whoever it might be – to publish an Action Plan for crofting to meet various objectives. Amongst these was to establish 5,000 new woodland crofts by 2020.

At the time, eyebrows were quietly raised (and some not so quietly) in certain quarters but this remains SCF policy and one supported by its partners. Often people respond to such ambitions with knee-jerk responses, so it is worth examining critically whether such a policy is ambitious, realistic, or perhaps even a bit conservative.

Granted, meeting this timescale will be challenging but what about the scale – what would 5,000 woodland crofts actually mean on the ground? There are two useful ways to look at this: how much woodland would likely be required; and how the situation here would then compare with that in other countries, if we had 5,000 more woodland occupiers.

Assuming each new woodland croft was 10 ha in area on average (slightly larger in fact than those created in recent times), obviously 50,000 ha of woodland would be needed. To discover what percentage of the woodland area of the crofting counties this represents is harder than it might appear, as official statistics are fairly crude and not broken down beyond country level (in contrast the statistics available on Swedish forestry are incredibly detailed).

I eventually found a paper (on indicators for High Nature Value Farming & Forestry in Scotland) which yielded the required figures. Using them, one discovers that the proportion of existing woodland of all kinds required to create 5,000 woodland crofts as outlined above is slightly less than 9% of the total. In reality it could well be less, as many have pointed out that creating new woodland crofts by establishing new woodland on new crofts would be a useful way to contribute to government afforestation targets.

So much for being a radical proposition, then. What about the impact it might have in terms of opening up access to woodland to manage?

As there is currently a minimal rented woodland sector in this country, woodland occupation tends to be through ownership so I use this a proxy for occupation (hopefully in the future this simplification will no longer be valid!) No official statistics on woodland ownership are available – again in contrast to the Swedish stats mentioned earlier – but last year the Forest Policy Group (FPG) published a scoping study on the issue.

If you drill down into its results you come up with a national figure of around 2,700 for resident woodland owners – so 5,000 new woodland crofts would represent a near trebling of the number of resident woodland occupiers, and consequently a profound shift towards a woodland culture. I say towards, because despite this advance we would still be far from achieving the level of access to woodlands to manage enjoyed by most other countries.

Figures for this for a selection of countries are included in the FPG report mentioned above (which is well worth reading in full), but consider this: one in seven Finns owns a forest holding, and half of these live on it – isn’t that what we would call a woodland croft?

So the bottom line is that 5,000 new woodland crofts would require a minimal proportion of our existing woodland, dramatically improve access to woodland to manage, support the development of a woodland culture, and deliver a range of local benefits.

What’s not to like about that?

Some light relief for the weekend – a TV review……

Amongst other signs of an upsurge in interest in woodlands has been the appearance of a number of programmes about them, of which I was reminded by a recent rerun. Woodlands of course have been a staple of wildlife TV for years, but what made these new programmes different was their focus on people as a part of the woodland habitat.

It could be argued that such a focus actually began with the ‘Woodland House’ episode of Grand Designs featuring Ben Law, ten years ago now, but in truth there has been little in the intervening years (apart from occasional ‘revisits’ to Prickly Nut Wood). Until last autumn, that is, when in quick succession we had ‘Jimmy’s Forest’, with Jimmy Doherty; ‘Kevin McCloud’s Man Made Home’, and ‘Tales from the Wildwood’ with Rob Penn. Just for fun, I thought I’d give my personal take on all four series.

Grand Design’s ‘Woodland House’ set the standard, showing the general public that building attractive and comfortable homes from locally-sourced materials was not just possible, but affordable too. Ben Law’s wider philosophy towards his woodland came over well, and Kevin McCloud was clearly deeply struck by the project.

Jimmy Doherty is a lovely guy and has done great things in the field of food production. However, for me, ‘Jimmy’s Forest’ felt a bit contrived; many of the activities shown gave the impression of being set-up for the cameras rather than ‘fly on the wall’ footage of what was happening anyway. Indeed, I wondered how much time Jimmy actually spent in his wood when the cameras weren’t there.

I had high hopes too for KM’s ‘Man Made Home’, after the wonderful Grand Design’s episode described above, and the initial discussions of why he wanted a cabin in the woods resonated perfectly with the sort of thinking behind for example the Thousand Huts project. However, alarm bells rang early on when the milling of an oak tree merited just a few seconds of airtime. Though there was an emphasis on reuse & recycling, one had to wonder whether driving a pick-up round the country in pursuit of an aero engine cowl to build a hot tub was really all that ‘green’……

‘Tales from the Wild Wood’ not only had a slightly off-putting title, but a bit of a shaky start: who can forget Pablo (was it Pablo?), the Spanish forestry ‘expert’, and his extremely dodgy approach to freeing a hung-up ash. However, after this things settled down and the programme became a thoughtful exploration of many pertinent woodland issues (worth a second series, BBC 4).

So for me, Grand Designs & Tales from the Wild Wood jointly take the ‘Woodland BAFTA’. I’d like perhaps to see something a bit more ‘edgy’ in future programmes if we get them – examining why, for example, there is so little diversity in our approach to woodland management, which apart from anything else leaves us dangerously exposed to future uncertainties.

And of course from a woodland crofts perspective, these programmes all took a very southern focus. I have suggested to BBC Alba that an exploration of how woodland crofts could make the pattern of Scottish forestry more like that in Scandinavia and elsewhere would make an interesting subject for their excellent Eòrpa series, but have yet to hear more……

Today is International Day of Forests. For more information have a look at the FAO webpage here, but more importantly, try and find some time to get out into the woods and enjoy them. And if you can, plant a tree!

I thought I’d talk about woodfuel in my first ‘proper’ post, partly because with Spring approaching it might be last time many people (apart from the committed full-time woodfuel user) may be thinking about it. However the need for warmth is such a basic human need that it is inevitably a subject that will crop up repeatedly on this Blog.

Partly too, it was triggered by one of those coincidences where just when you are thinking about an issue, several other things crop up to feed into the train of thought. In this case it was a weekend session cutting firewood about 3 miles from home. Minimal ‘timber miles’ I thought, but couldn’t help but also think it was still more than sourcing it from one’s own woodland croft.

Then, when lighting the fire with old newspapers I came across a story about the Drax power station in England going ‘green’ through a large-scale switch to burning biomass – but much of which will be imported from Europe, Africa and the USA. This neatly highlights the issue of efficient use of biomass, as applicable to our domestic use as to industrial giants.

Firstly, does it make sense to burn precious (and non-renewable) hydrocarbons to move woodfuel any distance? And what is the most sensible use of biomass?

The answer to the second question is obvious really: modern woodfuel equipment can generate heat at over 90% efficiency in the very premises where it is required – so we should always use biomass for heat. By contrast electricity generation from biomass (without CHP) typically struggles to exceed 30% efficiency – resulting in a huge proportion of the energy in the wood being wasted.

The answer to the first question may seem less clear: certainly the mainstream forest industry would play the ‘net carbon’ card – yes, there are carbon emissions from timber transport, but these are more than offset by the carbon savings of using biomass versus fossil fuels.

However, it is often very useful to consider these questions in relation to our own experiences. Would we travel 10 miles for firewood when it could be obtained 5 miles away? Would we even travel 3 miles (as above!) if it was available on our own woodland croft? All else being equal – of course not.

The final piece of synchronicity in my woodfuel thoughts was the news this week that the EU has introduced new rules for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from forestry. At present these focus on accounting and reporting rather than reducing emissions, but longer term, emission reduction targets may be introduced. Such measures would begin underline the message on biomass which we already instinctively know to be true:

“Woodfuel – keep it local.”

……and for those of you who have been patiently visiting the site over a period of months and each time found that it was still ‘Coming Soon’ – our apologies, we had hoped to be up and running sooner. However the delay is in part a reflection on how busy the woodland crofts ‘scene’ has become generally.

We hope however it will be worth the wait, and will be a useful resource for those interested on woodland crofts and wider small-scale & family forestry. We plan to add to the site over coming months and therefore welcome any suggestions or feedback via the contact form.

In addition we aim to make the blog required reading: we set ourselves the challenge of being interesting, topical, and yes, a wee bit provocative at times. That however simply reflects the times we live in – where new problems and challenges require new approaches not business as usual. And to make sure our lofty aspirations do not slip, we have enabled comments on the site – to allow the opportunity for an instant ‘reality check’!

Enjoy reading – and come back soon.