Your article about the shortage of forestry workers (11 June) highlights one of the problems that we are facing as a training organisation. We have trained people to become self-employed small woodland workers since 2000. We organise for them to go on chainsaw training and first aid, risk assessment, ecology and craft courses. We place them with an experienced coppice worker and pay them a small bursary.
We could provide many more woodland workers, but funding is becoming such a problem, with a lot of charitable trusts switching to social funding and environmental grants based on how many trees are planted per pound. If there is to be any point in planting trees, we are going to need people to manage them as they grow, and use the wood to make sustainable products.
Your article refers to a shortage of female applicants, which is not a problem we have had. What we need is more grants aimed at training.
Ian Taylor
Secretary, Bill Hogarth Memorial Apprenticeship Trust
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