Scotland’s Timber Transport Fund has awarded £2.2m in its latest round of funding to help reduce the impact of timber lorries on rural communities and the environment.
But Scotland’s forestry sector is being urged to come forward and take advantage of the £1.5m funding still available.
The latest projects to win support include Rannock Rail Head (£65,820 award), which will allow timber to be extracted from Rannoch Forest by rail, saving on 1,200 lorry trips per year.
The Rathad – Mara project (£209,575 funding) involves road and pier head construction and will link three forests to floating piers, enabling the transfer of up to 270,000 tonnes of timber onto ships insteaad of long hauls on fragile rural roads.
A third successful scheme involves public road upgrades and a new in-forest roadlink will remove traffic from the road network in north-west Mull (£726,930 award).
The Scottish government has already committed £13.1m to 34 projects.
