TO PLANT MORE TREES, WE NEED MORE FORESTERS

In a sawmill on the Scottish Borders, a pioneering group of students who one day will have the future of our forests in their hands are learning the fine details of turning trees into planks. It's part of their on-site training as the first apprentices in Britain to study for a degree in professional forestry.

- JOHN CRAVEN

With ages ranging from late teens to mid-40s, they will spend one week at university for every eight weeks in work placements around the country during the three-year course. Unlike other students, they get paid - £23,000 a year - but there are no long vacations. Four hundred hopefuls applied for just 25 places on the course, created as the forestry industry struggles to cope with demands placed on it by ambitious Government targets for many millions more trees.

"Given the current skills crisis in the forestry sector, it's hard to see how these targets will be met," says Rob Hawkins of the Institute of Chartered Foresters. "There needs to be a campaign to raise awareness of the breadth of careers available in forestry. It offers highly skilled, technical, green jobs, far removed from the old lumberjack stereotype that sadly still persists."