Views sought on future of Tweed Valley site

The site, at Ashiestiel, lies 6km east of Walkerburn, and is owned by Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS), which has opened up the consultation on its use over the next 20 years, and the public have been invited to give their views, after a planned community drop-in event had to be cancelled due to the current coronavirus lockdown.

The land management plan being developed for the recently-acquired land includes details of how FLS intends to manage the site until 2030, and gives a direction of travel for the following 10 years to 2040.

The proposals include detail of how the Scottish Government agency intends to establish the site with a mixture of conifer and broadleaf species and in doing so meeting a range of objectives from priority habitat retention and enhancement to productive forestry.

Tom Harvey, planning forester with the local FLS team, said: “Ashiestiel has a mixture of interesting priority habitats that we intend to manage as open land and where appropriate enhance existing broadleaf woodland with further native broadleaf species, this will provide an important biodiverse network of habitats in the future”

“The site lends itself to contributing to the productivity of its neighbouring FLS block Elibank with good access from an existing forest road network”

“Unfortunately, due to the situation with COVID-19 we had to cancel the community drop-in event.

“It’s clearly not possible to re-schedule at the moment so as an alternative, we’ve put all of the relevant documents on to our website.

“We’d really like to get as much local feedback and input as possible so I’d encourage everyone with an interest to take a look and send us their comments to us.”

Enter the discussion by clicking here to take part in the consultation.