COLLABORATION CALL FOR FORESTRY LEADERS

Forestry leaders must band together to change public attitudes to spruce trees and commercial forestry, conference delegates heard at the launch of an industry report in late November 2023.
The call came as experts from Tilhill and specialist forestry agency GOLDCREST Land & Forestry Group highlighted the fall in tree planting in the past year at the launch of The UK Forest Market Report 2023.
The report is the most comprehensive publicly available year-on-year record of activity in the UK forestry sector.
Just 13,000 hectares of trees were planted in 2023, a drop of 7%, and 43% of the national target of 30,000 hectares. While Scotland continued to lead the charge with 8,200 hectares planted, this was a 27% drop from 10,400ha in 2022. Broadleaf planting amounted to 51% of all UK tree planting.
Xander Mahony, head of forestry investment at Tilhill, said the industry needed to work together to change negative public perceptions about Sitka spruce, the workhorse of the timber industry.
“People want things made out of wood. Wood looks nice. We have our buildings made out of CLT (cross-laminated timber) but they don’t connect that to growing good Sitka in plantations and so breaking through that communication barrier and making that connection is really important.
“It is something we need to figure out because we sit here feeling like we’re doing something good for the world and getting punished for it and that’s not a pleasant position to be in. We need to band together and work out how to change that.
“I think it is because we have a deficit of trees in the UK and we are planting relatively little compared to what we already have. It’s as though we are fighting over the scraps with people looking at conifer plantations which are quite big in size and asking why they’re not native woodland.
“The fact is we want both and if we were planting more trees and had an abundance of trees than perhaps the productive components wouldn’t seem so out of place.”