The last time I walked at Stobo Hope was on a long summer’s day, taking a loop through its rolling landscape with a friend in weather so warm we felt the urge to lie down and doze on the moorland, listening to insects.

Returning a few weeks ago, the landscape, now home to Scotland’s most controversial current plantation, was altered. Ridges of mounding ran along the slopes, many of them dotted with the tiny forms of small trees, some of them Sitka spruce, others commercial Scots Pine. A few of these saplings were dead. A swathe of heather was mottled with whisps of herbicide-killed plants as well as verdant regrowth. A sore-like new track hacked its way across one of the hillsides.  

All work at Stobo Hope had stopped - and for a reason. In September last year, following a judicial review, Scottish Forestry issued an enforcement order halting the planting. It also cancelled a £2 million grant issued to the developers. The main reason for this retraction was that hundreds of hectares had been blanket-sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate, and an “unauthorised” track created, both of which Scottish Forestry said had not been consented to.

Stobo Hope is a story that contains many of the big issues affecting contemporary afforestation.  This is the forestry plantation that has prompted a community group, Stobo Residents Action Group to petition for a judicial review calling for a full Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) of the Stobo Hope plantation. It was a challenge they won.   

Since the scheme is owned by a green investments fund, the Guernsey-based Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund, some critics see it as part of a return to the goldrush ways of the 1980s. They see it as harking back to a time in which forestry was driven by tax-breaks and investments, which saw the planting of the peatlands of the Flow Country. 

Harry Humble, CEO of True North Real Asset Partners, emphasises the point that the green investments fund receives no tax benefits as a result of being based in Guernsey.

It is also a scheme that looks set to take Scottish Forestry face legal proceedings again, since True North Real-Asset Partners, the company managing the fund and the development, responded to the halting of works with their own petition for judicial review. 

Stobo Residents Action Group on the John Buchan WayStobo Residents Action Group on the John Buchan Way (Image: Gordon Terris)True North claim that Scottish Forestry did know about the herbicide. Speaking this week, the company’s CEO Harry Humble said: “The point which the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund has continually sought to make since it was served with an enforcement notice last September is that the details concerning its use of herbicide and the need for track widening works as part of the ground preparation operations at Stobo (the absence of which Scottish Forestry say rendered its decision to issue a negative EIA screening opinion flawed) had already been submitted to Scottish Forestry in support of the Fund’s woodland creation consent application and were thus in front of the agency for consideration before it issued its screening opinion.” 

He added: “The Fund has obtained King’s Counsel’s opinion on the way in which Scottish Forestry currently handles Environmental Impact Assessment screening requests and the conclusion drawn is that there are significant flaws in the agency’s approach.

Scottish Forestry, which just this week published information about the EIA, said: “The Stobo scheme is currently the result of live legal proceedings and we are not able to comment in detail. On our website we have published information advising that this is an EIA forestry project and we will be providing a copy of the enforcement notice and statement of reasons online shortly.

“The applicant has been requested to commence the Scoping Process and seek a Scoping Opinion from Scottish Forestry.”

But for members of Stobo Residents Action Group, the problem with the plantation goes beyond the herbicide treatment and works access track, or the focus of the latest judicial review. David Lintott, a director of group, described the reasons why he has fought the development. Chief of these, he said, is that it is in a National Scenic Area. 

“As a planning barrister,” he said. “I do see cases involving environmental harm going ahead. But the Stobo scheme has gone ahead in a way which is extremely disappointing. NatureScot made it clear from the outset that this would cause real and significant harm to the special landscape qualities of the National Scenic Area and yet Scottish Forestry insisted in their screening opinion (in which they screened out the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment) that there was no possibility of significant harm to the environment".

Freedom of Information requests by the group show that NatureScot repeatedly emphasised in their communications with Pryor and Rickett's Silviculture, agents for the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund, that this was an issue.

“We know that NatureScot was telling them back in 2020 when they were looking at buying the land that it’s in a national scenic area and has the potential to harm special landscape qualities. And yet the Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund bought it anyway. Why, if NatureScot are saying all that, are they buying the land anyway?”

Lintott, who is also the founder of lobbying group Restore Nature, can see part of the site from the window of his home. Stobo, he described with great affection, “is a uniquely beautiful mix of natural beauty, cultural heritage and ecology”.

The John Buchan Way which runs through it between Peebles and Broughton is a nationally important route along which people come to walk from far and wide. 

“In the vicinity of Stobo it runs through a culturally rich riverine landscape which has a softer feel containing Stobo castle and its landscape grounds. From there it runs into the wilder and untamed landscape of Stobo Hopehead itself as the path climbs before dropping into Broughton.”

“All this takes place," he added, "within a National Scenic Area especially celebrated for its landscape beauty and rich in ecology - containing habitat for Black grouse and Golden eagles alongside many other birds of prey, as well as being rich in invertebrate life. It is simply inconceivable that a scheme such as this should be permitted to destroy this landscape. If we can’t protect these most special landscapes what can we protect?”

On a recent walk of the area, Lintott described, he and chartered landscape architect Ian Dudley found some tree-planting on deep peat, which is not permitted in Scotland because of carbon loss. 

Photo taken by Stobo Residents Action Group of tree planting deep peatPhoto taken by Stobo Residents Action Group of tree planting deep peat (Image: Stobo Residents Action Group)

“We found a lot of the trees had been put in where there was metre-deep peat in the ground. The peat was just mounded up to waist high - and in Scotland you’re not even allowed to plant on peat when it’s more than 50cm high.”

Responding to this statement, Mr Humble said: “The site has been comprehensively surveyed for deep peat and the design reflects that. If there is evidence that areas have been missed we will take immediate action to address that but we are unaware of any factual errors.”

Like Lintott, Ian Dudley, a chartered landscape architect and chartered forester, who has examined the site, is highly critical of the scheme. “Ultimately," he said, “this is a nationally promoted recreational route that runs through a nationally important landscape and Scottish Forestry has been utterly deficient in not requiring an EIA.”

The issue is, he said, “the sheer size of it, and sheer amount of planting, the way it is just going to be mostly a blanket of monocultural Sitka spruce and other conifers”. He described it as  "staggering" that Scottish Forestry did not require an EIA.

The trees, when mature, he said, will meet over the top of the John Buchan Way.  “There isn’t much space either side of the path," he said. "Now when those spruce trees are  approaching their commercial age the branches are likely to extend three metres from the stem. So on either side of this path, if it’s a five-metre corridor that means branches are touching.”

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Among the points that Harry Humble, CEO of True North, makes is that Sitka spruce is not the only species planted at Stobo Hope. “Sitka occupies no more than 46% of the total site area at Stobo. More than 130ha will be planted with native species, enhancing both natural and man-made features as well as creating valuable and robust native habitats to connect neighbouring glens and catchments.”

However an SRAG spokesperson observed that as a proportion of the planted area the Sitka was much higher according to data from official maps of the site: "The percentage of tree species by planted area is around 72% Sitka spruce, 10% Scots pine and Douglas fir, so commercial forestry makes up around 82% of the planted trees."

Humble also pointed out that “less than half (42%) of the overall site lies within the National Scenic Area”. 

With Scotland under pressure to meet Net Zero tree-planting targets and a growing investment sector revolving around woodland creation, timber supply and carbon credits, the halting of work at Stobo Hope also raises questions about the future of this sector. 

Stobo Hope is owned by Forestry Carbon Sequestration Fund, a Guernsey-based collective investment scheme managed by True North Real-Asset Partners. "The underlying investors in the fund," said Humble  "are predominantly UK-defined benefit pension pools seeking to address climate change in their investments”.

As a 'Guernsey Green Fund', it must conform to guidelines and aim to achieve investment objectives, which include reaching a carbon sequestration target of 1.65 million tonnes through the creation of newly planted forestry assets.

How will these delays affect the fund?  Humble said: "The fund is  a closed-end investment structure so, whilst the delays are regrettable in terms of the bureaucratic burden, the situation has limited impact on the fund’s operation.

"The Enforcement Notice currently prohibits all access to the land, thereby jeopardising the £500,000 worth of planting which the fund put in place in good faith, having been given woodland creation consent and approval for the forestry grant scheme by Scottish Forestry. Indeed, the terms of the contract incentivised the fund to carry out planting as quickly as possible in line with the approved operations plan. This is why the fund has sought to challenge the terms of the enforcement notice in the Court of Session."

 One of Humble's concerns is how what has happened at Stobo Hope will affect investment in the sector.  "It is clear," he said, "this has had a negative impact on investor confidence. Planting land sales in Scotland have been negligible in the last year. The fact you can go through three years of work, do everything required and tick every box during the rigorous design process and then be stopped mid-plantation is astonishing and this has dented trust and confidence in the Scottish forestry sector.”

Heather sprayed with herbicide at Stobo HopeHeather sprayed with herbicide at Stobo Hope

But for many of the campaigners it is exactly this wave of green investment that is the problem.  One theme that repeatedly comes up when talking to campaigners against the site is the fear that we are at the start of a plantation rush that is an echo of the 1980s. 

David Lintott said: “I think the only way this trend is going to stop is if it is exposed in the way that these sorts of schemes were in the 1980s, where they were planting spruce on flow country and people actually saw what was going on. These schemes are being pushed through with no proper process to ascertain what the harm is going to be.”

“I originally qualified as a forester," Ian Dudley said, "and when I was training as a forest manager in the late 1990s, we still had the echoes of the tarnished reputation of forestry from those large-scale spruce plantations that went on in the 1980s which were very controversial, for example the way the Flow Country was planted up with spruce. We seem to be regressing back to that kind of situation where any environmental concerns are being ridden over roughshod because there’s a lot of money washing round. It’s basically a goldrush for zero carbon.” 

“Forestry got a very bad name for a period of time and it has taken a long time to regain its reputation. Generally woodland is environmentally and socially one of the most valuable things that you can do to land because of the sheer number of environmental services that woodland delivers - but only if it’s done in the right way. And the problem here is it's not done in the right way.” 

Tomorrow: 

Can Scotland solve its timber shortage problem? Inside the sawmill trying to find the answers