Thinking CAP: Upland Research & Management

The online booking facility is now available from the GWCT website.  For details see the earlier post, below.

Thinking CAP: Upland Research & Management - 13 March 2012

The Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust in partnership with Scotland’s Moorland Forum will be holding an event on Tuesday 13 March 2012 between 09:30 and 15:00 at the Huntingtower Hotel, Crieff Road, Perth PH1 3JT

The Thinking CAP event is being supported by Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Government. It will consider the current state of evidence about upland management and how this relates to the funding available through the Scottish Rural Development Programme.  The funding options in the SRDP are under review and in the afternoon delegates will have an opportunity to provide feedback on the relevance of the current options and discuss changes that they would like to see introduced.

Registration, coffee and lunch: £12 inc VAT per attendee

2 Feb 12 - the online booking facility is now available from the GWCT website 

The Thinking CAP event has been kindly sponsored by Turcan Connell and PDG Helicopters.

Scottish Moorland Group - Newsletter

The latest newsletter from the Scottish Moorland Group is published.

Woodland Expansion Advisory Group

The Woodland Expansion Advisory Group (WEAG) has been established in response to The Scottish Government's wish to increase the amount of woodland cover in Scotland from 17% to 25%.  The WEAG has established a consultation process which closes on 6 January 2012 and a copy of a letter that was sent by the Group to stakeholders can be downloaded from the FCS website.

The Forum will be submitting a consultation response and the intention is to base this on the paper that was prepared by a Forum task group in 2008.  Some of the recommendations that related to the need for a coordinated land use policy have been addressed by the development of the Land Use Strategy, but most of the paper is as relevant now as it was in 2008.

The WEAG has announced a series of seven stakeholder events across Scotland between 21 February and 1 March 2012, and details can be found on the WEAG page of the website.

The success of the 2011 Scottish Grouse season

The Scotsman has published two articles that describe how memorable this year's grouse season has been and how the income the sport has generated will be of benefit to moorland management, to biodiversity and to local communities.



The articles have been mentioned in separate posts on the Heather Trust's blog:

• Grouse shooting season a flyaway success by Stephen McGinty
• Shooting for the top prize of being the best by Andrew Hopetoun

The European Nature Trust

The European nature Trust's latest newsletter will be of special interest to those with an interest in peatland management.  There is a description of using voluntary carbon management to fund peatland restoration.

James Hutton Institute

The JHI newsletter published on 16 December 2011 can be downloaded here.  There is an option to sign up for future editions.