Every five years the Woodland Trust make their Management Plan for the Moss. This is a big deal: it sets the baseline for what will happen in the future. The document is now available here for public comment and naturally the Portmoak Community Woodland Group will give it a careful review.

The deadline for comment is 5pm Saturday 8 April 2017 and anyone can comment to the Woodland Trust. If you, prefer, send your comments to PCWG at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we'll incorporate them with ours.

It's a big document, 42 pages, with a lot of detail and there are two big items:

1. The long term intention is that ground conditions over the core area will be maintained as a raised bog habitat. Hurrah! This is a key goal for the PCWG and we've put a lot of energy into projects to restore the bog.
2. The last large remaining area of Sitka spruce will be clear-felled (going in from Scotlandwell, this is the area on the left). This needs to done because the trees are near end of life, are becoming increasing unstable and there is a heightened risk of large scale windblow which causes a safety hazard and is expensive to deal with on a tree by tree basis. The clearfelled areas will be encouraged to develop into mixed native woodland. Existing areas of Scots pine will be retained for as long as possible to provide a suitable habitat and food source for the small colony of red squirrels on the site. Any gaps that occur will be allowed to regenerate naturally into mixed woodland. Natural regeneration will be supplemented by enrichment planting as required with native species.

We welcome your thoughts.