This has been a very busy month for the the board. You’ll see we’ve elected a new board of Trustees who have worked tirelessly throughout the last few weeks to prepare the Community Consultation for the WSWG project. This is the next key moment as we move forward towards bringing these two woods into Community Ownership and its success will depend upon the support of the communities in which these woods are situated.

Our big thing this month was the first General Meeting of the WSWG SCIO, involving the retiral of the three interim trustees and the election of a new Board of Trustees to take WSWG forward as a charity. We had sent out a “GM Pack” to keep our WSWG membership informed, invite them to the GM and seek nominations for WSWG Members willing to become Trustees. The meeting was held at the Tayside Hotel in Stanley on 20 June with the formal proceedings followed by the opportunity to chat together over a cup of tea.

The main thing we have been focusing on this month is the legal obligation for the new WSWG SCIO to hold its first general meeting (GM) “as soon as practicably possible” after SCIO registration which was on 5 April 2022. The main purpose of the GM is for the current Interim Trustees to resign and a new Board of Trustees to be elected by WSWG members.

May Day sightings and soundings in Taymount Wood this year included three pairs of common crossbills, blackcap, willow warblers, jays, song thrushes, sparrowhawk, robins, blackbird, woodcock, siskins, greenfinch, wrens, wood pigeon, great tits, coal tits, great spotted woodpecker and (… summer’s nearly here!) TWO swallows.

Our big news of the month is that on 5th April West Stormont Woodland Group was officially registered as a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). The SCIO number is SC051682. WSWG will shortly be looking for a few more WSWG members to join as Trustees to help guide the group in its environmental, recreational and woodland acquisition aspirations.

We’ve been enjoying the lovely bursts of spring weather in between the grey and wet days! We hope you have been too. On 4 March and 13 March, 17 enthusiastic volunteers turned out for our WSWG “Protect a Wild Tree” events in Taymount Wood. A fun time was had by all and even the weather was good to us!

There has been more windblow in both woods during the recent successive storms of early 2022. Although we have still come off relatively lightly, there appears to be a bit more damage in Five Mile Wood than Taymount, but it has added to the clearance work required already from Storm Arwen.

We had our first ever WSWG Carol Singing event to celebrate the winter solstice in Taymount Wood on 21 December.

Whew! We are relieved to say that, apart from general debris, both woods seem to have come off relatively lightly in Storm Arwen compared to many forests across Scotland.

It does seem to be all very administrative news this month! But a lovely thing to let you in on is that there continues to be a pleasingly steady flow of new people signing up as WSWG members, and welcome to all. The most recent local people joining have taken us up to 472 Members with a further 282 named Supporters on our books.

“Soggy Saturday in October” – this month’s wonderfully descriptive blog from Margaret Lear on the “olfactory hamper” that is Five Mile Wood at this time of year. Although it has to be said that we have had some amazingly warm and sunny weather this month too!