Forestry and Land Scotland's Kevin Quinlan on the agency's future

FORESTRY and Land Scotland manages 9 per cent of Scotland (650,000 hectares) as the Scottish Government agency entrusted with the mission ‘to look after Scotland’s forests and land, for the benefit of all, now and for the future’.

FLS also functions as a public corporation raising the bulk of its income through commercial activity.

As the new chief executive, my role is to ensure FLS operates as a successful and sustainable business – generating income to maintain and increase forestry’s positive contribution to Scotland’s economy, its people and natural environment.

Part of that involves us producing around 40 per cent of Scotland’s annual timber output; a sizeable contribution to a sector that, as a whole, generates £1.1 billion for the economy each year and supports 34,000 jobs – often in rural areas.

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We lease land to key partners that enable 25 windfarms (with 50 more in development) that produce 1,217 MW of renewable energy that can power 800,000 homes. These leases bring in valuable income both for us and for communities, and opportunities for improvements to the forests and increased employment.

Then there is the work we do, often collaborating with partners such as Cairngorm Connect or the RZSS-led Saving Wildcats, that is vital for habitat and species conservation. We create hundreds of hectares of new woodland every year (900 ha in 2023/24) and we look after iconic locations such as Glen Affric and one third of Scotland’s temperate rainforest.

Our peatland restoration earlier this year reached the 10,000 ha mark for re-wetted peatland – at locations including Flanders Moss and the Flow Country – that once fully recovered is expected to capture 87,800 tonnes of CO2 per year – the equivalent of taking about 63,000 new petrol cars off the road for a year.

Conservation work for rare and endangered species boosts the long-term chances of Scottish wildcats, capercaillie and red squirrels, to name but a few. This can involve creating vital habitat, preserving habitat (including through culling deer), creating woodland corridors to help animals move from one forest to another, and facilitating translocation programmes (such as that for beavers) and reintroductions; over the past decade we have assisted the Vincent Wildlife Trust in translocating 100 pine marten to locations in England and Wales.

We also foster strong links with communities and consult on each of the 360 Land Management Plans that guide our work. We host over 90 community projects involving over 80 community bodies, and have so far completed 32 community asset transfers that boost rural cohesion and economic opportunity and also improve mental, emotional and physical health and well-being.

And that is not even beginning to touch on the well-being impact that our 300 visitor destinations – visited around 11 million times a year – have on visitors and in boosting Scotland’s international image and helping to generate around £252 million of tourism spend for the wider and mainly rural Scottish economy annually.

FLS proudly draws on 100 years of history and know-how and few organisations deliver across such a broad spectrum of objectives. However, looking to the future, the context that forestry operates in is changing dramatically, most recently with significant disruption caused by Covid-19, a turbulent global timber market, severe weather events and the rising cost of living.
If we are to continue to deliver for Scotland’s economy, nature and people for generations to come, we need to meet these challenges head on.

That is why, as part of the Scottish Government’s wider public sector reform agenda, we are making ourselves “fit for the future” by improving operational efficiency and flexibility – and working towards long-term financial sustainability.

Adopting more state-of-the-art technology will initiate a step-change in the quality and application of management information, and will underpin better co-ordination of our business planning.

For example, our improved Newton Nursery will provide ten million seedlings in its first operational year, scaling up to a maximum production of 19 million, guaranteeing our seed supply, both in terms of volume and health. We have also trialled the use of thermal imaging drones both to more accurately assess deer population levels and better inform our deer management, and in the detection of at-risk and protected species, such as Scottish wildcats.
We aim to achieve lower-cost sustainable land management, improve performance across the board, and transform our approach to procurement, and to partnership and project funding.

We will take a commercially savvy approach in prioritising what new commitments we can make with our limited resources and be more realistic and pragmatic when determining the scale at which we operate.

Nonetheless, safe and inclusive public access to our forests and land will not change and we will honour our existing commitments and meet our legal obligations, delivering timber to market when it is needed, prioritising sustainable forest management, contributing to net afforestation and working to conserve and enhance Scotland’s unique natural capital.

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