A lot of good news stories have come out of Scotland in the last few years where forestry’s concerned.

Impressive upticks in tree-planting rates have been celebrated in the press – and rightly so – but it was inevitable the tide would begin to turn and increasingly I’m noticing more and more voices taking up column inches and airtime to tell us how we’re getting tree planting wrong.

Inevitably their arguments come back to the old native vs non-native split. Fervent advocates for planting only native species have brought much commercial planting to a halt in Ireland and seriously slowed efforts to get things moving in England, but it seems we may now be subjected to the same exhausting discourse.

Time and again it’s argued commercial forestry is all ‘dead’ stands of monoculture conifers, where no other plants or wildlife can thrive (far from accurate) and Scotland should only plant native trees. The obvious problem is that unless you blanket the landscape with Scot’s pine you essentially give up on softwood production and even if you did, you’d be leaving your entire timber crop susceptible to disease (Dothistroma needle blight).

The spread of an increasing number of pests and pathogens across Britain has already overtaken environmentalist arguments against monocultures. Viable options for conifer planting are dwindling all the time and no forester worth their salt would conceive of investing in a single species under such an onslaught.

Despite hitting those great planting figures shouted about by the Scottish Government, recent pest and disease outbreaks and subsequent felling have removed a fair portion of our growing and mature tree stock. So too did Storm Arwen, bringing down around eight million trees across Scotland. This, then, is no time to be precious about tree planting. By planting conifers with a relatively short rotation, at least you can more rapidly recover any losses.

Tree planting and pest outbreaks are just some of the topics covered in the latest issue of Forestry Journal.

Others features include:

• An extensive look at the work of Falkirk-based contractors O’Neill Terrain Services;

• John Deere Forestry’s retiring service manager Billy Telfer is interviewed;

• We tell the tale of Scotland’s William Gibson, founding father of forestry equipment manufacturer Jonsered;

• Our monthly Buyer’s Guide looks at biomass handling;

• A review of the new Land Rover Defender 90.

To learn more, visit www.forestryjournal.co.uk/subscriptions