Taiga Upland

17 hours ago

Behind every peatland restoration scheme, every woodland creation project, every big nature restoration job in the hills, there's a track someone had to drive up to reach the work!

Access is one of the quiet foundations of what's happening across Scotland's uplands right now. Most of these projects are in remote country, on estate tracks built years ago for stalking or farming. When the weather takes a section of one out, the wider programme is stuck until it's fixed.

Our team was out on a local estate this month doing exactly that — repairing a hill track badly scoured by a heavy weather event. Skilled operators reading the ground, managing the water so it can't cause the same damage again, and using material found on site wherever possible to keep the work sensitive to the environment around it.

There's a lot of nature restoration happening in the hills these days. Reliable, careful access work is a bigger part of making it possible than most people realise.

#TeamTaiga #Groundworks #HillRoads #ScottishHighlands #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

4 days ago

Taiga Upland employs its workforce directly. Nearly sixty people across the enterprise, all on our PAYE, all issued Taiga PPE, driving Taiga vehicles, running Taiga kit. No subcontract labour on our jobs.

The part that gets said less often is that it costs more. Pensions, sick pay, holiday pay, BUPA private healthcare, an employee assistance programme, the workshop and finance teams behind it all. Running a business this way is genuinely more expensive than the subcontractor model — and we do it anyway.

The reason is simple. Consistent standards. Programme certainty. Safety systems that mean something. Real career development. And underneath all of it, steady year-round employment in the rural communities we're part of. Proper jobs, with a proper package, that let people build a life in the glens where the work actually is.

Rural businesses flourish when rural communities flourish. And vice versa.

#TeamTaiga #DirectlyEmployed #RuralEmployment #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

6 days ago

The team is back on the road, remobilising to a remote woodland creation site the winter snow chased us off before we could finish. A long journey back in, across some of the finest country in Scotland!

Before the machines start, the team meet on the track for a pre-commencement discussion. Skilled operators talking through how the job will run — who takes what responsibility, how they'll work together, how they'll look after each other in a place this remote. Standards agreed by the people who are going to hold themselves to them.

It's easy to overlook a meeting like this. But what happens on that track shapes the native woodland that grows here for the next hundred years. Legacy in action, quietly.

Then the machines move to position, and a new season begins.
Good to be back.

#TeamTaiga #Forestry #WoodlandCreation #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland #ScottishHighlands ... See MoreSee Less

Taiga Upland

1 week ago

Not every part of a peatland site can be restored with a machine.
Some ground can't be reached at all. On other areas, even where machines can work, there simply isn't enough vegetated material on site to do the job with cultivation alone. In those places, the answer is hand work — and this month our dedicated hand work team has been out on a large, heavily degraded site installing coir logs across the bare peat!

The coir logs are pinned into the ground with timber stakes, laid across the erosion features to slow the flow of water, raise the water table, and give sphagnum mosses a foothold to grow back. Over the coming years, the surface starts to cover, the peat starts to hold water again, and the ground starts to do its job.

Getting the material up there is a job in itself — tractor and Taiga dump trailer to the top of the hill, then transferred onto our specialist tracked carrier for the last leg onto the soft ground.
Having a dedicated hand work team is what lets us take on the hardest sites and finish them properly. It's not something every contractor offers.

#TeamTaiga #PeatlandRestoration #Peatland #ScottishHighlands #UplandContracting #RuralScotland #ClimateAction ... See MoreSee Less