About the Trust

Wilma Harper

Chair

Wilma is a Chartered Forester and Chartered Environmentalist.  An experienced director, having held senior positions across the Forestry Commission, she now has a portfolio of board positions in the forestry and biodiversity sectors.  She joined the board of the RSFS as Communications Director in 2017.  She is also a trustee for Scotland’s Finest Woods Awards and a former President of the Institute of Chartered Foresters.  She is a Director of TWIC, the local record centre for South East and Central Scotland, and the National Biodiversity Network.

Alongside her broad forestry and environmental background, she brings considerable experience of corporate governance, strategy and change management. She has a particular focus on areas which support people, helping them to improve their understanding and appreciation of their environment.   When sitting at a computer gets too much, she escapes by trail running in her local woods.

Tom Mitchell

Treasurer

Tom's background is as a Chartered Accountant, working in international offices of major accounting firms and in financial services. For the past decade, he has managed a firm of Chartered Accountants that specialises in working with charities improving governance, finance, risk and people matters.

Tom sit's on the ICAS charities technical panel and acts as a trustee for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, which owns Edinburgh Zoo, as well as for the Donkey Sanctuary. When not working, he loves to read, garden and delve into modern history.

Nander Robertson

Trustee and Operations Director

Nander has had a lifetime interest in the relationship between soil management, food quality and its impact on the health of both animal and man.  He started working life as a Ship Management Trainee and became fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers.  Later he moved into forestry engineering involved in sales management and market development introducing modern harvesting techniques and lightweight extraction machinery designed for plantation logging. 

In 1982, he founded the Glenside Group to promote the ecological management of soils and their fertility.  He is a past President of the RSFS and at The Garrique near Kippen his time is taken up with hands-on management of his own conifer and broadleaf woodlands.

Chris Allan

Trustee

Alison Motion

Trustee

Peter Philips

Trustee

The primary aim of the Cashel Forest Trust is to demonstrate the restoration and regeneration of Scotland’s Native Woods through sound forestry practice, delivering sustainable social, environmental, and economic public benefits.  To that end, we intend that not only that Cashel should be a place for people and wildlife to enjoy but also a working forest generating sufficient income to sustain our activities in perpetuity.  We will soon be starting thinning operations in the wood to help enhance both the amenity of the woods but also the current and future timber value.

Having established the core forest area, we intend now that any future expansion of the forest should be predominantly by natural regeneration, but with some additional planting where this is appropriate.  We have recently undertaken a couple of ‘bioblitz’ days to better understand the nature of Cashel and have a number of conservation projects in place.  Cashel is home to otters, badgers, red squirrels, water voles, pine marten, black grouse, woodpeckers, adders, glow worms, and many other species of wildlife.

We are fortunate to have Stephen and Mel Macluskie as our on-site wardens based in Cashel Farmhouse who help us steward Cashel.  One of our current priorities is to develop the recreation, amenity and educational potential of Cashel so we can demonstrate what Cashel can offer in terms of enjoyment of the countryside and education on forestry management for diverse objectives.

The oakwoods of Loch Lomond have a long history and represent some of the largest remnants of semi-natural woodlands in the country.  In the 18th century, the woods were systematically managed and converted to oak ‘coppice-with-standards’ with the smaller timber managed for bark for leather tanning and charcoal, and the larger timber for more general domestic and estate use. 

There is about 24 hectares of such remnant oakwood at Cashel. In the latter half of the 19th century this industry collapsed and at Cashel sheep farming became the predominant land use and remained so until the 1253 hectares of Cashel Farm was purchased by the Royal Scottish Forestry Society in 1996 with a grant from the Millennium Forest for Scotland Trust.

The Society set up the separate Cashel Forest Trust to help deliver the native woodland restoration project.

Between 1997 and 2005 some 300ha of new native woodland was established and which remains the core of the Cashel forest to this day.

The key strategic themes we have developed and the associated objectives we are pursuing are:

Education

• Use the woodland as a demonstration sustainable native species forestry;
• Make the woodland available for education, training and research purposes;

Recreation

• Encourage nature conservation, amenity and rural recreation;
• Create appropriate access, particularly for walkers;
• Enhance the landscape;

Conservation

• Develop and maintain the native woodlands at Cashel on a sustainable basis;
• Re-create a 'near-natural' sequence of forest types, ranging from predominantly Oakwood at the loch side through pine/birch wood to open sub-montane scrub on the highest ground;
• Provide a woodland 'wildlife corridor' linking the Loch Lomond and Loch Ard catchments;
• Encourage nature conservation, amenity and rural recreation;

Community

• Involve the local community as key stakeholders;
• Encourage nature conservation, amenity and rural recreation.