Achnashellach Forest Compartment Record
Document is courtesy of Inverness, Ross and Skye Forest District and staff at their Fort Augustus office.
This Forestry Commission form, R11 Compartment Record, appears to have been printed in 1953 and most likely replaced earlier versions. This form was used to record the detail of each compartment of a forest from around 1954 through to the 1970s but its use fell out of favour as forest maps were improved and sub compartment data bases established on early centralised computers. This version included space for an outline map of the compartment, details of the site with space for notes on preplanting vegetation and treatments, details of the planting stock used and for Beating Up plus any further work in later years. Compartment record form R12 was used to record thinning and harvesting dates along with respective tree sizes, numbers and volumes.
The Achnashellach Forest Compartment Record lists new planting in years 1954 and 1955 in Compartments 40 and thinning in Compartment No 15. Of interest is the description of the land before planting and details of how the birch ‘scrub’ was cleared to make way for the conifers. The seed Identity numbers are included for each species and it can be seen that for Sitka spruce it is annotated as 51/5 indicating that the plants were grown from seed was collected in 1951 and registered as lot number 5. This is identified in the seed register as part of a 1592 lb collection from Canada British Columbia, purchased from a company called R G Roche.
Much of the record consists of R12 showing thinning progress in a number of compartments with outturns per acre shown in the margins. Note that this was only part of the forest as previous work and plantings were not added to the new records.
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports, Maps of Forest and Woodland Areas