HQ News

Rounding off an exceptional Annual Study Tour

The 2025 Annual Study Tour visited some of the best woodlands in South Wales, from private commercial forests to amenity woodlands and newly planted native woods.

By Joe Roberts · May 20, 2025

We are extremely grateful to the South Wales Division for hosting an excellent and insightful Annual Study Tour, and their first in 20 years. It was wonderful to spend four days touring some incredible woodlands, reflecting on unprecedented change over the last two decades and discussing many important topics, from pests and diseases to climate change.

Day 1: Llanover and Llanarth Estates

The tour took us to the woodlands of Llanover Estate, where hosts Elizabeth and Ross Murray showed delegates how their 50:50 conifer and broadleaf woodlands are managed for amenity, ecological and landscape objectives, while also producing high-quality milling timber.

Coast Redwoods at Llanover Estate. Delegates discussed Wales' suitable climate for the tree, native to North West America. Allowing Redwoods to grow to maturity was seen as good way to lock up carbon.
An historic avenue of sweet chestnuts at Llanover Estate was suffering from Phytophthora ramorum. The hosts and delegates discussed how the disease should be managed.

At Llanarth Estate, owned by our Immediate Past President Ben Herbert and his wife Sara Herbert, we saw how an overgrown 77 ha area purchased from the Forestry Commission was transformed over ten years into a diverse and resilient block of commercial forestry.

Delegates were shown recently planted Douglas fir suffering from bark damage and engaged in good discussions about careers into forestry and management of deer and squirrels.
The group discussed the merits of single species stands, like this one of mostly Norway spruce, verses the benefits of Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF).

Day 2: Afan Valley

At Afan Forest Park, representatives from Natural Resources Wales (NRW) told the story of how the Forest District teams, aided by information from Forest Research, tackled the removal of over 1,100 ha of larch from these forests.  We also saw how plans to restore blanket bog are progressing at Pen y Cymoedd.

The Park is dominated by larch, but Phytophthora ramorum discovered in 2010 had devastating effect on the area. Still, this former mining valley has been transformed since 1970s into a green, forested landscape.
Hosts showed RFS members an area of restored peat bog after four years.
Delegates were also shown a new area that has been selected to be restored to peat bog. Members discussed carbon benefits of blanket bog verses conifers and the conservation value of undertaking this restoration work.

Day 3: Brynau Farm

At Brynau Farm, the Woodland Trust’s Chris Matts guided us through the largest woodland creation site in Wales, where new woodlands are being planted to aid natural flood management, improve climate resilience and create a sustainable farmed landscape.

Delegates were shown how the Woodland Trust approaches veteran tree management, which sparked an interesting debate about artificially veteranising trees so they might support more wildlife.
The Woodland Trust are creating new woodland using alder, oak, birch and rowan. The area includes previous woodland, as indicated by the presence of bluebells, an ancient woodland indicator. Delegates discussed tree protection options as the Woodland Trust is trying to minimise the use of plastic tubes.
The farm is also helping to provide flood protection for Neath in the valley below, through natural flood management.

Day 4: Wentwood

We finished the week at Wentwood, the largest area of ancient woodland in Wales, and a remnant of forest which once stretched from the River Usk to the Wye.  We looked at how management interventions undertaken by NRW has fared in the area of wood owned by the Welsh Government Woodland Estate.

We saw how NRW is restoring a Plantation on Ancient Woodland Site (PAWS) back to native woodland. The area had been cleared and restocked with oaks and other native trees.

The site includes a good stand of Norway spruce. Timber will be taken out when ready to crop and restocked with native trees.
NRW are trying not to use plastic tubes so deer fencing is used. They expect grey squirrels to be a problem once trees mature enough, but because hardwood timber is not the key management objective they are less concerned about damage done to the trees.
Delegates were given a presentation by Jim Hepburn (Forest Operations Manager, NRW), Owen Hoddy (Senior Officer Forest Operations, NRW) and Alison Field. The tour concluded with a special thank you given by Professor Julian Evans..

Thank you to all the hosts for their excellent hospitality and RFS Training & Events Officer, Andrea Donnelly, for coordinating another exceptional event. We look forward to sharing a full report of the 2025 Annual Study Tour in the October issue of the QJF.