Unique community purchase go-ahead for Highlands pinewood restoration project

Loch Arkaig

Plans for a major new pinewood restoration project in the Scottish Highlands have been given the go-ahead after Forestry Commission Scotland agreed to sell 1,086 hectares of woodland at Glen Mallie and South Loch Arkaig in Lochaber to a Highland community group in partnership with conservation charity Trees for Life – marking a major milestone in efforts to restore the ecologically important but rare native Caledonian Pinewood habitat.

 

The Achnacarry, Bunarkaig and Clunes (ABC) Group and Trees for Life now have 18 months to raise £500,000 to buy the land, following which they will begin a process of native woodland restoration and of restoring the links between the local community and the wild and remote country on the south side of Loch Arkaig in the West Highlands.

 

This is believed to be the first time that a conservation charity has partnered with a community group to purchase surplus Forestry Commission land under the National Forest Land Scheme. The scheme – administered by Forestry Commission Scotland – gives communities and non-governmental organisations the opportunity to acquire state-owned forest land which has