West Stormont Woodland Group is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO) formed with the specific aim of bringing Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood into Community Ownership.
This excitingly achievable goal is being pursued under the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 Part 5 through the auspices of the Community Asset Transfer Scheme (CATS) operated by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS).
The woods, Taymount Wood at 155ha, and Five Mile Wood at 134ha, are currently in public ownership and managed for the Scottish Government by FLS.
“Community Wellbeing and Resilience through Eco-forestry for the Planet and Forest Diversification for People.”
The easy and most enjoyable bit of this project is the year-round programme of events for all ages and abilities, across the wide-ranging themes encapsulated in our Window on the Woods Vision. See our News and Events page to find out about our past and present activities.
We also spend a lot of time building and benefiting from connections throughout the local, regional and national community and environmental networks of which we see ourselves a meaningful part. That too is covered in our back history of Community Monthly Updates which are mailed out to members and supporters along with event notices. See The Bigger Picture for an idea of the role we see for Taymount and Five Mile Woods in our local patch and why local outreach to other community and environmental organisations, projects and stakeholders is so important for us as part of West Stormont Connect.
Before 2018, locally speaking, we probably took Taymount and Five Mile Woods for granted. But when FLS intimated their intention to sell both woods, the risk of a solely private commercial future for them for repeated timber cropping came into sharp focus. We knew they harboured a surprising amount of biodiversity for plantation woodlands, partly because of the predominance of native tree species in both woods and the rich compartmental complexity of Taymount Wood in particular, along with their recent management under LISS (Low Impact Silvicultural System). We realised, however, that the only way they would be able to fulfil their ecological potential in their own right and as a mainstay in any hopes for local nature recovery at landscape scale would be through allowing the woods to grow old – to 300 years and more – rather than never allowing them to exceed the limited biodiversity capacity of “teenage” woods by consigning them to repeated short term rotational timber harvesting every 50-60 years. These woods are not the best for timber anyway. That is a key reason why they appeared in the FLS disposals list in 2018.
They are in fact perfectly suited for a long-term if not permanent shift in management objectives to those primarily prioritising nature and community.
In a nutshell, that is why WSWG continues to persevere so hard to bring these woods into community ownership in the face of an economic climate where forestry land prices and community funding availability for anything bigger than relatively tiny woodlands seems increasingly far apart. Records show that between 2018 and 2023, FLS sold about 6,250ha of woodland, of which 11 sites totalling 234ha were sold to communities under CATS. At 155ha and 134ha respectively, Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood each represent about 0.03% of the publicly-owned National Forest Estate.
But one small step on the road successfully achieved!
Even though WSWG has not yet succeeded in purchasing the woods, we were delighted recently when FLS advised us that they had removed both Taymount Wood and Five Mile Wood from their current disposals list due to the added value for community and nature added since 2018 by the WSWG project. Many things could change this in future, but for now, the woods have been saved from imminent private commercial interests on the open market and WSWG can continue pursuing our goal of community ownership with one less weight on our shoulders.
We would therefore love to see another 0.06% of the National Forest Estate transferred to community ownership for nature recovery and community, one way or another.
How we intend to do this is set out below and we welcome anyone who believes they can assist in achieving this to step in and help us in this next phase.
Focus on the Future
Alongside our ongoing delivery of community events and activities, the future is all about moving on with our applications for funding for woodland acquisition and further developing the strategic ideas and timeframes for how the project will go forward.
Community Ownership - Our Phased Approach
Our first goal therefore is to raise funding for:
- A two-year development phase bringing in professional help in key disciplines and specialisms to bullet-proof our transition to community ownership from Vision to Reality
- Purchase of Taymount Wood and a two-year start-up period to underpin the transition to our projected staffing complement and programming of income streams to support the project long term
Again, we are looking to team up with anyone who can help us in our mission, so that we can furthermore embark on implementing our long-awaited Woodland Management Plan for Nature Recovery alongside ramping up our community benefit work as a staffed organisation.
For full details of our Development and Operational Proposals
People we are Proud to be Working with
