This piece is an extract from our A View from the Forest (previously Forestry Features) newsletter, which is emailed out at 4PM every Wednesday with a round-up of the week's top stories.
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A LOT of time at Forestry Journal towers is spent considering the future, and how the industry is evolving the world over.
Sometimes that change is for the better, sometimes it feels like that change is for change's sake. But change – whether big or small – is pretty much unavoidable.
For the foresters of yesteryear, the forestry of 2024 would be unrecognisable. Gone are the early days of axes and fire lookout towers, replaced by complex machinery and relentless digital solutions, which provide instant, minute detail on every single log.
Even long-standing practices are becoming a more infrequent sight in the woods. Take hand cutting; once the way of doing things, it's considered a dying art by some in the sector, such is the proliferation and almost guaranteed productivity of modern-day harvesters.
This has been evident in recent weeks when the industry found itself on the back foot, dealing with a 41 per cent budget cut in Scotland and the suggestion that coniferous plantations should no longer be supported by the public purse. Were that to happen – and it's clear many are prepared to fight against an overhaul like that – it would drastically alter a sector that supports thousands of rural jobs and injects millions into the UK's economy.
During a period of some uncertainty about the sector in Scotland, perhaps is now the perfect opportunity to pause, reflect, and explore how forestry could look in five, ten, or even 15 years.
In many ways, next week's Forest Policy Group conference couldn't come at a better time. With foresters from across the country heading to Perthshire to discuss a better future, it's sure to inspire some interesting debate. Not all of forestry's problems will be solved in a single day, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
Forestry has an opportunity to emerge from its recent pummelling with its head held high, ready to thrive in a changing world. The trick will be getting it right.
As our writer Simon Bowes recently lamented: "Sometimes it’s not so much change for change’s sake as awkward for awkward’s sake.
"If this change for necessity’s sake that I’ve had to make has taught me anything, it’s that on a personal level I’m a man from a different time and that there needs to be a reality check in forestry before we follow candlemakers and wheelwrights into a corner of the local folk museum."
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