Woodknowledge Wales

Woodknowledge Wales

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forestry

Sawmillers visit Grosvenor’s Eaton Estate in Cheshire

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Woodland creation is a viable economic option for some areas of the estate’s farmlands

Grosvenor Eaton Estate’s Head Forester Greg Vickers hosted a visit to the estate’s state-of-the-art sawmilling operation, Grosvenor TimberWorks, and woodlands for Woodknowledge Wales on 25th November 2023.

Participants enjoyed a two-hour morning tour of the sawmill located in Hatton Heath, near Chester, followed by an afternoon walk through just some of the extensive woodlands managed by Greg.

Since 2015, Greg has been Head Forester for more than 2,000 hectares of woodlands across Grosvenor’s Eaton Estate in Cheshire, the Abbeystead Estate in Lancashire, the Halkyn and Nant Estates in Wales, and the Reay Forest Estate in Scotland.

The woodlands create local employment and supply materials to building and property maintenance activities across various estate holdings. The Eaton Estate alone has over 450 properties requiring routine maintenance and upgrades.

The Hatton Heath sawmill

Hatton Heath Mill took five years to build and became operational in 2021. To construct the sawmill, the project team had softwood grown on Grosvenor’s Reay Forest Estate in the North West Highlands shipped to BSW Fort William sawmill for processing, then transported to the Makar Workshop near Inverness. Here the workshop constructed frames and panels and had them transported down to the Eaton Estate for assembly. To fit in with the estate’s vernacular, the sawmill has a red-brick façade, and details such as red rainwater fittings. All the timber fittings within the building use estate-grown and processed hardwoods.

The site is on the southern edge of estate lands and was formerly a dairy farm. Three full time staff are employed in the mill, working five days a week. At present the sawmill aims to produce 2500m3 timber products per annum. The estate uses 20% of production internally across its various sites. The rest it sells to third parties. A small workshop facilitates on-site secondary processing of stock for the buildings team.

The mill works five days per week, usually milling hardwoods on two days and softwood for the other three days. The mill’s daily output can vary between 5m3 and 7m3 when processing hardwood, where special orders will often make up part of the production. When milling softwood, the outputs can rise to 15m3 per day.

The team stack timber outdoors for air drying prior to kilning. They fell and mill hardwoods in winter to avoid rapid drying during summer months.

As well as processing timber from its English and Welsh estates, timber is transported by ship from the Reay Estate via Kinlochbervie in Sutherland to Mostyn Docks. The short distance between the port and the estate helps minimise distance travelled by road, reducing its carbon footprint

The Eaton Estate woodlands

The Eaton Estate woodlands occupy over 400 hectares on the Cheshire plain. Planted for landscape and amenity use in the 1840’s on what had been agricultural land, the woodlands occupy sites along the five approaches (formal drives) to the main hall. The medieval ridge and furrow system are clearly visible within the woodland.

The heavy clay soils primarily hosts oak alongside a mix of broadleaf and conifers. Ash, alder, sycamore, lime, beech, hornbeam, and birch grow among Douglas fir, yew, larch, western red cedar, and Norway spruce. More recent plantings of hybrid lime and cherry have achieved yield class 8 to 10 with Douglas fir achieving yield classes in the high teens. Hornbeam is growing well but attempts to grow sweet chestnut have not been so successful.

Woodland creation is a viable economic option over traditional agricultural practices for some areas of the estate. In particular, the lower ground near the Dee flood plain.

The tour ended back at the sawmill and a donation was made to the Estate’s chosen charity in thanks for their hospitality.

For further information about our Community of Practice for Sawmillers and future site visits, please contact john.sweeney@woodknowledgewales.co.uk

Experts identify actions needed to mitigate potentially catastrophic threats to UK Forests

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New paper published highlighting key issues that must be addressed if our woodlands are to continue to deliver the range of benefits on which we depend.

A chilly pathway through the forest

Woodknowledge Wales’ Specialist Advisor Wood Science, Dainis Dauksta, and new board member Professor John Healey from Bangor University, joined a team of 42 European experts to carry out a horizon-scanning exercise and identify previously overlooked opportunities and threats faced by UK forests over the next 50 years.

Results were published in, ‘A horizon scan of issues affecting UK forest management within 50 years‘ by Tew et al., whichwas published in Forestry: An International Journal of Forest Research in November 2023 [1]

Dr Eleanor Tew, Head of Forest Planning at Forestry England and visiting researcher at Cambridge’s Department of Zoology emphasised that “The next 50 years will bring huge changes to UK forests: the threats they face, the way that we manage them, and the benefits they deliver to society” [2]

John Healey, Professor of Forest Sciences at Bangor University further explained that “There are many challenges to overcome to ensure that our woodlands not only provide crucial habitat for biodiversity conservation, and environments that are invaluable for human wellbeing, but also continue to produce wood as a vital renewable material that has a key role to play in achieving net zero emissions to meet the challenge of the climate crisis.” [3]

In the new paper, the authors focus on 15 emerging issues from a collated list of 180 that, while previously overlooked, are expected to have significant impact on UK forests over the next half century.

Source: Figure 2 Tew et al, A horizon scan of issues affecting UK forest management within 50 years, Forestry

In their thematic analysis, the authors were able to map all fifteen issues across eleven themes of significance within three main categories: environmental shocks and perturbations, political and socio-economic drivers, and emerging interactions, as shown in Figure 2 above.

The top-ranking issue in the final list when scored individually by the expert panel was ‘Catastrophic forest ecosystem collapse’. A reference to the cascading consequences caused by the interconnected impact of a combination of hazards affecting forest environments, this level of damage to forest ecosystems has already been witnessed in North America and continental Europe. Other threats include competition with society for water, viral diseases, and extreme weather affecting forest management.

While delivering an unequivocal tale of caution and call to action, the final list of 15 issues summarised in the paper’s abstract includes a number of opportunities that are key to mitigating the adverse outcomes of climate change on both the natural world and human societies.

“It was notable that three of the selected 15 issues focused on predicted shifts in future wood product markets and the challenge of ensuring that commercial forest resources do match future value chains. It was important that the Woodknowledge Wales and Bangor University participants in the Expert Panel played a valuable role in advocating for the inclusion of these issues and developing their description in the resulting paper,” said Healey.

Summarising the significance of the expert review as a whole, Professor Bill Sutherland, Senior author and pioneer of horizon scanning at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, noted “We are already seeing dramatic events in Europe’s forests whether fires, disease or bark beetles, whilst the importance of trees is increasingly recognised. Horizon scanning to identify future issues is key, especially as trees planted now will face very different circumstances as they mature in scores of years.”  [2]

This research was funded by Forestry England. The Forestry Commission is bringing the sector together in 2024 to look at next steps.

References

1: Tew et al, A horizon scan of issues affecting UK forest management within 50 years, Forestry DOI: 10.1093/forestry/cpad047

2: University of Cambridge Press release: 8 November 2023, www.cam.ac.uk/research/news, Accessed 13 November 2023

3. University of Bangor Press release, 8 November 2023, www.bangor.ac.uk/news/, Accessed 25 November 2023

Reflections Post COP26

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By Gary Newman

Was COP26 a big success or a missed opportunity? Viewed positively, the conference represented a significant ‘shifting of the dial’ with new pledges and targets. On the other hand, it was not the transformative moment that many had hoped for. In reality, we will only be able to judge the significance of COP26 with the passage of time. Today, the increasing consensus about what needs to be done to limit climate change is finally shifting the focus onto delivering the actions in reality.
In Wales, we have increasingly ambitious policies and accompanying funding for two key climate change mitigation solutions – the expansion of tree planting and the creation of low carbon housing from timber.

Making investment promises count

In terms of housing, Welsh Government are investing £250m a year for the next 5 years to deliver their target of 20,000 new low carbon homes. A further £150m is being made available  to improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions by retrofitting existing homes. Furthermore, new standards for social housing introduced in October this year are encouraging low embodied carbon, the use of timber and proof of housing performance through measurement of outcomes. Our ongoing WoodBUILD 2021 programme is all about exploring how these new standards can be understood and implemented in a way that supports Welsh forestry and timber construction sectors.
In terms of tree planting, Welsh Government have a highly ambitious target of an additional 43,000 ha by 2030 and 180,000 by 2050. This would increase our forest cover from the current 15% of our land area to 24%. Financial support for new tree planting has increased from £1m in 2019/2020 per year to £5.5 million in 2021/22. Whilst certainly not enough to achieve our targets this is a definite statement of intent.
These promising policies are reinforced by a further 39 recommended actions emanating from the Trees and Timber Task Force led by Deputy Climate Change minister, Lee Waters MS. The development of a timber industrial strategy, which is hoped to be a significant turning point for the Welsh forest industries sector, features among these recommendations.

Turning good intentions into purposeful action?

More money and new policies and targets for tree planting, timber manufacturing and housing will undoubtedly help to create the conditions necessary for progress, but they do not in themselves ensure that change will actually happen and with appropriate haste. We all know reality is way more complex than that. There is no precedent or blueprint for the scale of the change that is needed.
Becoming a forest nation will require the participation and collaboration across all sectors from farming to housing and everything in between. This is what we’re striving to develop within the Woodknowledge Wales membership network, through our Communities of Practice and by enabling further knowledge transfer and shared learning through case studies, events and guidance documents that are freely available on our website. We firmly believe that collaborative approaches are essential to enable and accelerate change and we are very grateful for the active participation of our members.  But creating and maintaining such a coalition for change is not a simple task. The building of trust takes time, is hard won and easily lost. As with COP26 on a global scale, so with the participants in the forest nation agenda on a Welsh scale – to achieve a better outcome for all we have to understand the benefits as well as the nature of the compromise we are asking for.
With this in mind , we are increasingly focused not so much on the what and why but on the who and how within our work programmes. Who needs to be involved and how can good intentions be turned into purposeful action across all the relevant sectors of farming, forestry, wood processing, timber manufacturing and construction?

Overcoming social and economic land-use divides

Increasing the supply of timber means saplings not only have to be grown and planted, but also managed to ensure they survive and thrive. This means farmers, as custodians of 80% of Welsh land, also have to become informed foresters. In many ways the land-use debate of farming v. forestry has become an artificial divide which was maintained and exaggerated by the Common Agriculture Policy – which should perhaps have always been a common land-use policy encompassing both farming and forestry. Growing crops, managing cattle and sheep or managing woodland all require different knowledge, skills and equipment but are well within the capability of the Welsh farming and rural communities.
If we are to dramatically increase our forest cover in line with targets and provide timber for industry, then we certainly need to do this in a way that is embraced by our communities. That means trees grown by Welsh farmers and in a way that supports rural employment in forest management and wood processing. There is much work to be done to inspire farmers to grow trees and to make it economically viable for them to do so. We have recently produced a series of briefing notes on the economics of growing trees for timber that are designed to support farmers and their advisors in their decision making. We will run a webinar for the farming community on this topic in early 2022.
In the housing sector we continue to work with our members on new build and retrofit housing projects to reduce embodied carbon, increase building performance, and to advance the appropriate use of timber components and offsite timber solutions from the Welsh supply chain.
So, regardless of the global politics played out at COP26, our focus remains upon how we can better support our growing and committed membership to get good things done. For us, this means planting more trees, processing more wood into high-value timber products and creating more low carbon homes from timber. That way we can be confident that we are reducing Welsh carbon emissions whilst at the same time building a more vibrant and resilient forest economy for the benefit of current and future generations.

Climate Change Mitigation Potential of Conifer Plantations

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Expanding commercial conifer forestry is the most efficient strategy for achieving climate change mitigation through woodland creation, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.
The ground-breaking research led by Bangor University, applied dynamic life cycle assessment to the UK’s national planting strategy of 30,000 ha yr-1 from 2020-2050. A total of 33 different future scenarios were modelled.
An essential feature of the research, which is one of the first and most rigorous studies of its kind worldwide, is the inclusion of the carbon flows in the whole system: soil, trees, forestry operations and harvested wood product value chain.
The research does not advocate one type of forest only. It merely concludes that where climate change mitigation is the main policy goal this is best delivered through a commercial conifer planting regime.
Our Forest Policy Briefing summarises policy implications deriving from this research.
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Top five alternative conifer tree species review

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Forests and woodlands are as much part of the mix of solutions for the Biodiversity and Climate Emergency as they are themselves under threat from it.
The UK Climate Change Committee have set out strong recommendations for 30,000 hectares of new woodland per annum by 2050 (UKCCC, 2020), of which a significant portion will likely be commercial plantation woodlands. Expansion and sustainable management of this new woodland will act as a mechanism for meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal 15, combatting climate change, improving home-grown timber supply for the construction sector, and providing a wide range of valuable public goods.
Plantations, alongside other forms of woodland creation, have an important role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation, providing public amenity and recreational benefits and biodiversity conservation. The coniferous forest resource in Great Britain is increasingly expected to deliver a broad range of ecosystem services to society; this alongside the provision of timber and other forest products, through management for multiple objectives, often within a small geographical area.
Welsh Government commissioned Woodknowledge Wales to conduct a review to identify the top five alternative commercial tree species suitable to meet timber utilisation demands in light of increasing potential pest and disease pressures as a result of climate change.
Our approach to identifying the top five alternative tree species for GB has drawn on and collated the existing knowledge base through literature review and inputs from a broad range of stakeholders. It does not capture experience found on the ground which has not been published, yet. Results should be seen as a starting point for further investigation.
In this sense, we have set out on a journey of collaboration bringing together stakeholders to discuss potential ways forward. If you would like participate in our future stakeholder workshops, please get in touch.
Please note this an amended version of the report published on the 23rd June 2021 which now lists the top five ranked species in Table 3.6 in the correct order (Thuja plicata and Sequoiadendron giganteum were in the wrong order in previous versions).
English:
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Cymraeg:
Dadlwythwch grynodeb
lawrlwytho’r adroddiad llawn

5 Essential Strategies for an Emerging Forest Nation

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Wales is not a forest nation. Wales is a sheep, beef and dairy nation. Wales is a steel nation.
Like many nations, Wales is the economic country it is, not by political design but largely because of historical accident. And there has never been a better time or more reason to change. We have left the European Union and have also declared a Climate Emergency. A more purposeful approach is now required to achieve the net zero carbon goals set by Welsh Government
Therefore, we are proposing five integrated strategies for how Wales can achieve a just transition to become a new high-value forest nation. A transition that would create substantial employment and a transition for which Wales has many natural advantages.
Wales has suitable and available land for afforestation, fantastic climate for growing the kind of trees that industry needs, the land and workforce for new industries and proximity to almost limitless export markets for high-value timber products.
Wales must move towards more sustainable low-carbon industrial and land-use options that are geared to meeting the resource needs of the low-carbon society and that are economically viable.
Wales is starting from a long way back. This paper sets out how our slow start can be turned to our strategic advantage if Welsh Government decides to lead in the adoption of integrated economic policies outlined in this paper that are purposefully aligned across our construction, manufacturing and land-use sectors.
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The role of our own conifer forests for building a sustainable society in Wales

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Despite wide recognition of their value, plantation forests are critically misunderstood and undervalued in Wales. Plantation forests comprise around 7% of the planet’s forest area whilst sustainably supplying over 50% of industrial roundwood. This report looks at myths and tropes around home-grown timber and considers research results from wood science and socio-economic aspects across planting, forest management, timber grading and processing.
Modern British sustainable forest management techniques were established 150 years ago and are still appropriate for efficiently growing construction grade softwoods. Exemplar stands of high grade Douglas fir in north Wales grow some of the largest conifer trees existing in Europe. Older conifer stands across Wales have great potential to produce high grade joinery softwood. Sitka spruce forests are routinely denigrated, nevertheless over 95% of Welsh spruce sawlogs can be graded to strength class from C16 to C27 because of Sitka spruce’s high strength to weight ratio. Yet, quality is regularly used as a weasel word in order to reinforce negative views about Welsh homegrown softwoods.
The FAO reported in 2013 that current trends in European forest management could result in an over-supply of wood from broadleaved species, as well as a shortfall of coniferous timber. Planted forests are exposed to socio-economic risks due to governance failures. These risks comprise a weak or inadequate forest policy framework including insecure investment conditions.
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More and Better Home-Grown Timber—The role for a consolidator

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What might a business plan for the supply of home-grown timber to the Welsh housing sector look like, if it is to be closely integrated with the ownership and management of the timber resource in Wales?
Additional capacity in the sector has been identified in three key areas: secondary processing capacity; in undermanaged forestry and woodland; and a vast potential for greater tree planting in Wales, for a range of drivers.
This outline of a proposed business plan builds upon a previous analysis, which identified low integration between the supply and processing of Welsh timber, against the increasing demands of the construction sector.  In order to deliver a reliable supply of timber, consolidation is required at a point in the supply chain.  This could be achieved at two basic levels, either/or by stock of sawn timber collected from a number of small or medium mills, or consolidation of roundwood at a saw log level feeding predominantly one larger mill. The options for investment in both are discussed in this document. The authors seek not to decide at this stage which is better or worse, but to outline the conditions under which each would be viable.
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More and Better Home-Grown Timber—The financial case for existing landowners to plant woodland

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From the TV presenters of Countryfile to the ever-escalating claims of political parties in the last UK elections, it seems everyone wants to plant more trees. Reasons vary from carbon capture, amenity, and biodiversity to production of usable timber, as do levels of ambition.
Amongst the most widely quoted targets, The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) say that UK needs 30K Ha of new woodland a year to 2050 as part of a suite of land use changes to meet the UKs commitment to become Zero Carbon. This afforestation is predicted to account for the largest share of the forecast £39 Bn cost, the majority of that being spent on land acquisition. This presumes that either we expand the public estate or encourage land acquisition by external investors.
Experience from solar and wind farms suggests that this will be expensive, slow, and unpopular with some existing landowners, particularly farmers. Nonetheless there is considerable pressure on farmers from Brexit and existing financial challenges particularly of upland farming are severe in Wales.
Based upon the above, our approach is to solve two problems together. Woodland creation for a range of benefits, providing the means for farm transformation, while avoiding the expense and social disruption of land acquisition.
Promising lower costs of delivered woodland and a wide range of associated benefits, the approach has much to recommend it, subject to its financial viability.
This report reviews opportunities and challenges through the lens of financial viability.
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Serious About Green?—Building a Welsh wood economy through co-ordination

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Why would it be beneficial for Welsh society to build a wood economy? The ‘Serious about Green?’ report takes a closer look and analyses the economic and social parameters.
The report is authored by the team at Foundational Economy Research, led by Karel Williams. It brings together the Woodknowledge Wales forest industries agenda with foundational economic thinking. In a world without silver bullets, we believe the report provides a frank analysis of where we are now, and how a transformative journey to a socially just wood economy can be coordinated.
There’s no doubt this is a challenging agenda. Wales is a sheep, beef and dairy nation and Wales is a steel nation. These activities are deeply ingrained in our cultural identity.  They may have been rational activities for the past century but are not well-aligned to the low carbon needs of 21st Century Welsh society. Forestry is.
Furthermore, Wales has a landscape, soil and climate suited to forestry. Well-conceived forestry can address both the biodiversity crises and the climate emergency, whilst providing an industrial resource with which to build and retrofit the low carbon homes of the future.
The report offers insight and stimulating ideas to policy makers, business leaders and citizens interested in a sustainable future for Wales.
Interested in being part of the journey towards a wood based foundational economy? Get in touch to join the dialogue on how to build a foundational Welsh wood economy.
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