New Highland woodland to be created

AIGAS Field Centre is one of 60 sites chosen for an ambitious new woodland project.

The Woodland Trust is to create 60 Diamond Woods across the UK - each of 60 acres - along with hundreds of smaller Jubilee Woods

It aims to plant 6 million trees and involve millions of people in celebrating The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next year

The trust is looking for landowners, of all kinds, to plant woods on their own land as part of the scheme.

Aigas, in Strathglass, is the family home of writer and lecturer, Sir John Lister-Kaye, one of Scotland’s best known naturalists.

The centre, a family run business, has been created around the family home and is now one of Scotland’s premier nature education centres which attracts around 5,000 school children and 500-600 adults a year onto its educational courses.

Within the grounds of the estate are a Victorian arboretum, Bronze age and Iron age archaeology, nature trails, lochans and a variety of wildlife including badgers, pine martens, red squirrels, red and roe deer and beavers. The area is run as a working estate encompassing farming, woodland management, tourism and education.

Warwick Lister-Kaye Diamond Wood site owner was delighted to join the project.

" As Aigas Field Centre strives to move away from fossil fuels, we hope that future generations will be able to learn traditional coppicing techniques and management of the wood as a renewable fuel resource in an ecologically sensitive and sustainable way,” he said.