Ratagan Forest Compartment Record 1958
Document is courtesy of Inverness, Ross and Skye Forest District and staff at their Fort Augustus office.
This is an unusual set of compartment data forms that have been compiled for Ratagan Forest and appears to be all locally produced based on the year 1958. The real data is in the individual compartment details which could only have been arrived at by detailed survey and measurement work (shown at the end of the PDF) on the tree crop in each stand. It is a very nice neat piece of work. The compartment records would appear to be the forerunner of the WP0 (Sub compartment assessment record form or card)
The first nine forms are a summary of all the tree crop volumes and areas in the forest broken down into species, age and quality class. It is with this essential information the forester is then able to estimate the annual growing increment of the forest and from this determine what is a sustainable cut and plan his annual thinning and felling programmes, the resources to execute the programmes and then the marketing of the products.
The last 5 pages in the PDF show a Sample Plot form for Compartment No 21/5 which appears to have been a special stand for checking and sampling volumes. Also shown is a completed Tariff sheet with details of girth sampled trees and volume sample trees worked out from top height method. Perhaps they were not felled and heights taken with instruments. Not sure how the Tariff sheet here numbered TY5 (in later years T15 I think) relates to the Sample Plot No 9 form?
It would appear that much of the early Forestry Commission paper work, understandably so, was directed to providing a detailed programme of quantities achieved, the total costs and the costs per acre of establishing and protecting the early forests. The main focus of the early management paperwork was to providing information required at a national level for annual reports and secondly for management at a local level. There does not seem to have been many official forms for working out of annual thinning and felling programmes mainly because there was so little of it in the early days especially after the war.
Forest Working plans had to be produced every five years of so for each forest and it must have been very difficult and time consuming for District Officers to collate all the data especially for future harvesting programmes.
Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry Records, Booklets and Reports