2024 Conference. Presentations.
Friday presentations
Keynote Speech: Growing Future Foresters: Lessons from the American Mid-West. Amanda Bryan
There is currently a workforce crisis taking place in the forestry sector across the UK – this affects the public, private and voluntary sectors. To date nothing has been able to address the shortage of young people expressing an interest in taking up forestry education. Research indicates that personal exposure either through direct experience or through knowing professionals already working in the field through family and friend networks is an important factor in young people’s career choices. So, if we know that one of the key contributory factors in influencing decision making around careers is having direct exposure to a subject area and often that is best achieved through education, either formal or informal it makes sense to look at where this is done well and not try to reinvent the wheel.
On this basis Amanda undertook a Churchill Fellowship looking at school-based forestry education in the US Mid-West – specifically the States of Wisconsin and Michigan. These States have a unique mechanism of School Forests - tracts of land which were planted and cared for by school students (from the 1920s onwards) with education focused on the importance of planting and protecting forests and how to look after them. Now these School Forests are mature wooded areas which provide both education and financial resources to support environmental and wider educational activities. The Schol Forest resource is accompanied by a framework of curriculum alongside transport, equipment loan, teacher CPD and high school level student competitions.
Amanda will set out what she learned and will consider how the good work that has been undertaken by several CWA members can be expanded.
Delivering the Forestry Strategy: progress supporting more people and communities to benefit from using, managing and owning woodlands. Dr Amy Nicolson, Urban Woodlands and Communities Advisor, Scottish Forestry.
Amy will provide an update on the recent work by Scottish Forestry and partners to deliver Scotland’s Forestry Strategy and its ambition to increase the number of people and communities benefitting from the use, management and ownership of woodlands, the continued partnership with the Community Woodlands Association, and plans for the future.
A Year in CWA
The CWA team will share information about their achievements over the year, which includes the introduction of our mentoring schemes. They will be joined by Amy Clarkson (Applecross Community Company) and Adrian Clark (Evanton Community Wood) who have both worked with our professional foresters this year.
Saturday presentations
From Field to Community Forest, the funding, the fallouts and all the fun in between! John Hitchcock - SEAChange Trustee, Collieston, Aberdeenshire
Initiated as a carbon capture project, our community woodland on the NE coast of Aberdeenshire is now established and offering much more than offset. I will share our learning through our journey from funding, land purchase, community interface and the required design evolution; through planting, the glyphosate debate, maintenance, acquiring of free trees to the pleasure from accessing a lovely space we are now sharing as a community, enjoying more folk getting involved along with witnessing the changing biodiversity as our wild space develops. There are so many rewards for developing a Community Woodland.
Anagach Woods Trust. Hamish Napier
Anagach Woods is a 1000 acre community-owned native pine woodland in Grantown-on-Spey, Scotland. The woods are more than three times the size of the adjacent town, an impressive ratio of green-space to built-up area. Hamish Napier, a director of Anagach Woods Trust will share Anagach woods Trust's recent management plans, fundraising efforts, online engagement and forest maintenance work, which all furthering the engagement of the local community in caring for Anagach Woods - a beautiful sanctuary for wildlife and essential green space for people.