The NET 5 visit to Finland will focus on different aspects of forestry and biodiversity management and education. The group will also meet with Finnish forestry students to learn about environmental education and to share their skills from Scotland.
The aim of the course was to give an understanding of land use in Southwest Norway, with a particular focus on forestry, game management, and conservation. Relevance has been heightened by recent trends in Scottish rural policy, seeking to redress the balance in land tenure between smaller-scale freehold, community land ownership, and the sporting interests on private estates. Visiting these upland areas of montane scrub in Norway was incredibly inspiring, showing us what we could do to restore habitats largely lost from the Scottish landscape.
The first thing that struck me about Latvia is that there are trees as far as the eye can see and it’s rare to see a fence, except occasionally in city gardens. In a country where forest covers just over half of the land mass (and the aim is to reach 56% cover) it was […]
With its independence, Latvia is negotiating and exploring the boundaries and crossovers between capitalism, neoliberalism, socialism, civic participation all beneath the umbrella of climate change threats and the remnants of its Soviet past. What we would deem as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ have completely different connotations and consequences in Latvia. Cooperative farming, a triumphant alternative example to intensive commercial commodity focused farming in Scotland is only just now coming back…
LATVIA – 2015 Gauja River – Latvia As seen by; (left to right) Ewan Campbell (Scottish Natural Heritage), John McTague (Scottish Wildlife Trust), Sarah West (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), Ian Stewart (Forest Enterprise Scotland), Rab Potter (Scottish Wildlife Trust), Kate Sampson (The National Trust for Scotland) This report provides feedback/information/reflections/musings and good […]
About the Course “You should come back in May” was perhaps the phrase of the trip! We were told we’d see Slovakia’s biodiversity at its best in spring. The good news? For woodlands, we were there at the right time, or nearly so. But we were all really delighted with our experience of Slovakia’s biodiversity […]
An impressive 87% of the land area of Finland is forest, comprising 66% productive (over 20m ha) and 11% old growth (mostly, but not all, protected). Approximately 24% of the forest belongs to the state, while the remainder is privately owned. 60% of the forests are family owned. The reason for this high proportion of […]