This year we will be taking a break from upland Sitka Spruce plantations to visit the extreme South East of Wales and to explore mixed woodland flanking the spectacular Wye Valley. Close to Chepstow, St Pierre’s Great Wood is 107 hectares of mixed plantations on an ancient woodland site, with base-rich soils overlying limestone. Design plan objectives here are to restore semi-natural native woodland via lower impact silvicultural systems, leading ultimately to CCF management, delivering biodiversity, timber and resilient woodland for amenity, conservation and recreation. We are grateful to Natural Resources Wales for agreeing to host us. Please see the flyer for further details.

This field visit to Thetford is a fantastic opportunity to see and discuss some mature research species trials (established as an understorey). You will also see more recent underplanting in diseased and thinned Corsican pine using a far wider range of species than traditionally used in this area. The various underplanting techniques used at Thetford and the options for future management, will make for interesting discussions. Please see the flyer for further details.

The 2019 AGM will be held the evening before the England Field Visit to Thetford which we hope will allow more of our members to attend. All members are invited to the AGM which will be from 17.30-18.45. Following the AGM, Rachel Riley will deliver a talk about Thetford Forest District and there will be a dinner from 20.00. For full details, please see the flyer.

The 2019 Scottish CCFG field visit will be hosted by Forest Enterprise Scotland around Craigvinean, Dunkeld. We plan to build the programme around looking at examples of different types of thinning interventions in the developing regeneration e.g. early interventions, the management of more advanced natural regeneration of conifer and broadleaf, crown thinning. See the flyer for further details.

The 30^th anniversary conference of ProSilva will be held from 11-14 September 2019 in Radlje ob Dravi, Slovenia on the theme of “Reconnecting forestry science and practice: networking knowledge”.

6 to 9 June 2019

We are delighted to announce that we plan to run a foreign study tour to Northern Italy from Thursday 6^th to Sunday 9^th of June this year in conjunction with Pro Silva Ireland.

Hosted by Pro Silva Italy, we will see CCF in practice on steep terrain in different forests of the Piedmont Alps in north-western Italy from a base hotel in Turin.

The tour will cost £225 per person and will include your bus and excursions, accommodation, three breakfasts, three lunches and one evening dinner with local entertainment. You will need to arrange and pay for your own travel and budget for two evening dinners and any refreshments.

Please see the full programme with further information and the booking form.

Deadlines for registrations is Monday 25^th March 2019

Please note, we have a maximum of 30 places in total; 15 for CCFG members and 15 for Pro Silva Ireland members so please complete the registration form early to avoid disappointment.

This is a return visit to the Forestry Commission’s North Cumbria Forests, previously visited by CCFG in 2014 during the National conference. The area has a long history of conifers, particularly Douglas fir, under CCF management and we will revisit two forests Wythop and Dodd Wood. We will see a variety of CCF thinning regimes and underplanting. We will look at mixed species broadleaf CCF management and on Dodd Wood visit a site where large Douglas fir overstorey and first thinning of the understorey have been carried out by high lead extraction. We will have the benefit of both local staff with many years’ knowledge of the sites and Forest Research during our visit. Detailed information on each site to be visited will be available.