Taiga Upland

24 hours 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

3 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

5 days 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

Taiga Upland

1 week ago

Forestry is going through a hard patch. Timber prices are low, budgets are tight, and restocking costs are being scrutinised harder than they have been in years!

That pressure is real, and it's understood. But restocking is the start of a crop that will be growing for forty years, and the decisions taken now — the ground prep spec, the contractor chosen, the corners cut or not cut — show up in the timber long after the current market has moved on.

Ground done properly the first time is one of the quietest but most important calls in forestry. The pressure of this year's budget will pass. The crop will be there for decades.

#TeamTaiga #Forestry #GroundPreparation #Restocking #ScottishForestry #UplandContracting #RuralScotland ... See MoreSee Less