Tilhill Forestry Build on In-House Ecology Team Asset

Tilhill Forestry is delighted to announce the appointment of Sarah Oakley who has joined the company as part of the in-house ecology team working under the guidance of Tilhill Forestry’s lead Ecologist, John Gallacher.

Sarah is based at the Central Borders office in Jedburgh and will be benefitting from John’s 20 years’ experience in forest ecology as well as bringing her own experience to the team.

Of Sarah’s appointment John Gallacher said: “Sarah brings with her considerable ecological knowledge and expertise from the public, private and NGO sectors. She will undoubtedly be an asset to Tilhill Forestry, ensuring we continue to take account of the environment in all the operations we undertake across the UK.”

Sarah’s previous job focused on large scale wetland restoration projects in the New Forest, which aided in understanding issues such as diffuse pollution, protected species mitigation, working on designated sites and providing guidance and advice to contractors and machine operators on how to minimise the impacts of groundworks.

In joining Tilhill, Sarah said “I’m looking forward to working in the Borders again – somewhere I worked as a Red Squirrel Conservation Officer from 2000-2003, before spending 5 years at the Forestry Commission’s Selkirk office as a Community and Conservation Ranger.

Working in the New Forest gave me fantastic opportunities to work with internationally protected habitats. Steering a course through everything from black bog ants to pillwort, ground nesting birds to goshawks, dodging the Commoners ponies, cattle and pigs along the way.

The aim was to restore the rivers and streams of the New Forest to their original courses, infilling the over-deepened artificial drains and repairing damaged mire systems, to restore the natural floodplain storage capacity of the Forest, which in turn reduced downstream flood risk.”