The myForest team regularly provides support and advice to woodland groups across Britain. Last week, George Dennison (myForest Manager) and Paul Orsi (Director of Operations) hosted a webinar for members of the Community Woodlands Association looking at how they could use myForest to support their woodland management activities.

The Community Woodlands Association was established in 2003 as the representative body of Scotland’s community woodland groups. There are around 200 groups across Scotland, involved in or responsible for the management of thousands of hectares of woodland and open space. Just over half of the groups own their woodlands, the remainder lease or work through a variety of formal and informal partnership arrangements.

Some 40 members joined the webinar towards the end of a cold sunny day to watch a live demonstration of myForest, and to take part in an interactive Q&A session. George showed members how they could use myForest to map their woodlands using different mapping backgrounds, how data layers can be helpful in understanding a woodland, and how users can start to annotate maps with features such as mountain bike routes (a request from one of the participants!). He went on to show how the powerful geospatial database in myForest can store forest information linked directly to a woodland’s compartments and how this information can be used to create a Scottish Forestry compliant management plan, all in one place.

We hope this webinar is the start of a long-lasting relationship between myForest and the CWA, and we look forward to supporting their members as they undertake the important task of managing Scotland’s community woodlands.

Screenshot showing myForest and ancient woodland layer