Borgie Forest — Planting Map as at 1967
Map courtesy of North Highland Forest District.
This fair copy of a planting map would probably have been retained in the District Office and used infrequently but kept up to date as planting progressed. It is the third in this series of Borgie Forest Maps and in addition to showing the replanting of the forest in the 1950s, the new plantings in compartments to the east and south during the 60s are added. Surprising large amounts of pure Sitka spruce were still planted but certainly on the southern additional area more Lodgepole pine (PC) was used. See PDF document for full map. The large version of the map covering the northern half of Borgie Forest does show the tiny remnants of the forest planted in the 1920s which survived the large fire that wiped out much of the forest.
As usual with a national organisation there was a code and procedure convention for mapping of plantations some of which survive in the FC to this day. Acquisition boundaries were edged with a yellow ink (in this case green was used); compartment boundaries (rides) drawn in red ink; the extent of the planting in any year was given a light colour wash, outlined in green ink and the planting year written in green eg P.66; the compartment’s serial number and area in acres was written within the compartment sometimes within a small circle; the areas where different tree species were planted within each compartment were annotated with a species code eg SS (Sitka spruce), LP (Lodgepole pine) etc; different species areas in each compartment had to be separated by a dotted black line; internal fences, streams and other land usually indicated by a solid black line. Map scale was usually 6 inches to the mile.
Note that the annual reporting year and the planting year coincided at this time in that they ran from 1st Oct to 30th Sep. This avoided having an artificial split in the totals for the planting season which ran from November through to May. The Planting Year (PY or just P) was fixed as the first summer following planting and thus trees planted in Nov 55 and May 56 were both annotated P56.
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Groups: Caithness and Sutherland, Forestry Areas, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas