Culloden Forest Partnership - Second community consultation

As the Scottish School of Forestry became engulfed in darkness on Monday evening small lights appeared as community members from Balloch, Culloden and Smithton arrived to talk about the future of their woodland.  The Culloden Forest Partnership is a community initiative set-up between the Forestry Commission and Inverness College UHI to facilitate community management of Culloden forest.  Aiming to use the forest resource for education, research, recreation and community capacity building the partnership is currently engaging with the communities to identify issues and develop plans.

Earlier this year the Scottish School of Forestry hosted the inaugural community consultation, which explained the aims of the partnership and gathered information from participants – the second consultation built on the outcomes of the first, which identified common priorities including access, recreation, education, awareness and forest management.  Currently the themes are being refined into short to long-term actions with the aim to hand over the management to volunteer community steering group, alongside a planned Forest Fayre in May 2017 to help launch the partnership.