The initiative aims to develop a circular economy model of local timber supply for the community by delivering a range of forestry skills in partnership with the Carbon Neutral Islands project.
Estimated Price
63000
Islay Forestry Initiative
Islay Development Initiative requires springboard capital funding to help the project - Islay Forestry Initiative - to move onto Phase 4 of an 8 phase plan. The funding would be used to purchase a small scale forwarder and source the required LANTRA training, to extract saw logs for processing to feed into the local need for home grown timber under the Carbon Neutral Islands plan. The project fits CLLD under Growing the Economy and Tackling the Climate Emergency by creating green employment, island resilience and restoring habitat and is the next stage funding to help IDI deliverPhase 4 of the Islay Forest Initiative – Develop a community owned small scale fuel wood harvesting operation.
The project is needed because Islay has over 10,000 acres of commercial Sitka Spruce all nearing maturation and no active forestry industry on the island. The project will create long term employment, training and development of local people in forestry and assist with reforestation and afforestation of native Atlantic rainforest on a large scale. As a community led initiative, the project sits under the Carbon Neutral Islands Steering Group as an approved project delivering circular economy, long term carbon saving and significant benefits to Islay's biodiversity by restoring Atlantic rainforest on the island. Generating local benefits from harvesting and replanting of forestry forms a key part of the Islay Community Climate Action Plan – (ICCAP).
The project will contribute to Community Wealth Building by taking a placed based approach to maximising the local benefit of harvesting Islay's Sitka Spruce resource in a sustainable way. IDI has taken a long-term, measured and cautious approach to delivering the required skills in forestry from scratch and is the project is highly replicable across other islands and rural mainland communities alike. Our forestry team has been fully trained through other phases in felling and chainsaw operation, windblown, tree nursery operations and planting, working on active forestry operations off island, also attending the Scottish School of Forestry. We are now ready to move onto small scale harvesting.
