Flow-Country tax-dodge forests worthless

30 March 1998

Flow-Country tax-dodge forests worthless

THE tax avoidance factory-tree farms which were planted in the Flow Country of Caithness and East Sutherland in the 1980s have been declared worthless.

The Daily Telegraph “personal view” carries a bitter attack on the policy which originally permitted the forests to be planted.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which now owns some 20,000 acres of the Flow Country in Strath Halladale, is digging up 280,000 trees. The cost of harvesting them exceeds their value, so they will be left to rot.

The article says important natural habitats were destroyed when the plantations were created to provide tax breaks for wealthy investors. It says the plantations were erected in the far north where the Forestry Commission had the sense not to plant trees.

• The Daily Telegraph 30/03/98 page 25