Morvern Community Woodlands—Woodland Crofts

The Live Life Morvern Action Plan identified housing, croft creation, path networks and protection of the rainforest in Morven as important to the Morvern Community.  Morvern Community Woodlands (MCW) is hoping that The Lochaline Community Forest project can address these priorities.  

The vision is to create a community-owned forest that supports the local economy through crofting and land based livelihoods, restores native rainforest habitats, provides access to native woodland for recreation and learning and delivers lasting social, economic, and environmental benefits for Morvern. The purchase will see an end to unsustainable and unsightly clear fell cycles and create a forest that is productive, provides homes and is a beautiful place to spend time in, for everyone who visits, in perpetuity. We hope to create eight crofts in the first phase.

In 2024 MCW gained funding from the Scottish Land Fund and the Highland Council Community Regeneration Fund to commission a feasibility study for the project which was delivered by the Community Woodlands Association. This gave us a huge amount of information about the site; a good indication on the area, possible layout and financial viability. In 2025 MCW submitted a Community Asset Transfer request to Forest and Land Scotland (FLS). This was successful, and in January 2026 MCW was awarded a discount of £177,000 on the land on the basis of the economic benefit that will be brought to the area. This qualifies as match funding for the purchase. 

MCW submitted an application for the Scottish Land Fund Stage 2 Funding at the end of March 2026 for funding to purchase the land. We will find out in July 2026 whether we have been successful. In the meantime, we have been awarded £20,000 from the Pebble Trust and the Highland Council Community Development Fund to pay for staff and consultants to work on the project. This includes; a full hydrology report; a review of the cash flow and business plan, a woodland management and deer management plan; planning permission in principle for croft housing and writing a croft allocation policy. There is further community consultation planned as well as training and engagement events.  

We are looking at models for crofters to be able to self build homes whilst the community retains ownership of the land and are working hard to ensure living on the crofts is viable and affordable. Tree planting schemes and native woodland restoration will be an important part of the project and we are looking at how to fund and maintain a path network through the site that will connect Lochaline with Achaebeg and Achnaha. We look forward to ongoing community consultation and engagement about how this new area of community woodland in Morvern is shaped.  

Whilst consulting on woodland crofts MCW identified a number of local people desiring access to land for agricultural crofts; most had generational farming heritage in Morvern. Having made enquiries, Ardtornish Estate have expressed they would be open to the possibility of creating crofts on agricultural land if a local community group were to take this forward. Morvern Community Woodlands would be very keen to see this happen in tandem with the creation of woodland crofts.