Seeing is Believing

Led by our Patron, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, "Seeing is Believing" is the BHL initiative to organise working demonstrations throughout the UK to show the real benefits of working with horse in forestry.

All demonstrations will be on working sites and will show how horses work, what their ouptuts and costs are and what impact they make on the woodland.

The Cornwall Event.

The original idea and the title, "Seeing is Believing" came from HRH The Prince of Wales when he presented the BHL Woodland Management Award in June of 2007.

After much planning and preparation even the sun shone on us finally in Ladock Woods near Truro on Thursday July 10th. 2008.

Over 70 invitees attended representing the major forestry and land management groups such as the FC/FE, National Trust and Woodland Trust, the major harvesting companies and many large estate owners.

HRH The Prince of Wales renewing his acquaintance with Ella on one of the demonstration sites.

Two demonstration sites were organised to show horses working with swingle trees, arches, small forwarders and large forwarders with powered loading.

In addition, a work site was shown worked by a felling team, two Ardennes mares bunching for the forwarder and a very large Finnish forwarder with powered loading pulled by two Ardennes stallions.

Keith Lenihan and the forwarder at the stack

A total of nine horses were on site and a good display of the range of harness and equipment used by modern horse loggers was displayed.

The day culminated with speeches at the 'camp'. The BHL was roasting a whole roe buck over a wood fire and the Duchy of Cornwall had organised amazing catering so we all felt welcomed and full!

Doug Joiner, BHL Chair, addressing HRH The Prince of Wales and the invitees.

The day was a huge success. The BHL is deeply grateful to HRH The Prince of Wales and to all the Prince's staff, both from the Duchy of Cornwall and from Clarence House, who helped to make this wonderful day possible.

We are also grateful to our two FECTU colleagues who travelled over from Germany and Luxembourg to support us.

Work was commissioned on the day and several contacts have been made since. We hope that we will have persuaded those attending to consider horse logging more actively when planning works in the future. As His Royal Highness urged in his speech, " Perhaps we might see, here and there, a few experiments being made with horse logging in some of the woodlands that some of you manage."