TELEVISION personality Terry Wogan has sold his Scottish forestry
investments.
The Irish-born entertainer was one of several showbusiness stars who
bought woodland in Caithness and Sutherland for tax-relief purposes.
Wogan took a #115,000 stake in commercial tree-planting 10 years ago,
when he bought three remote moorland sites totalling 1430 acres at the
height of the Flow Country ''trees versus birds'' controversy. The tax
concessions for new forest schemes were axed in the 1988 Budget but they
continued for existing plantations up to two years ago.
Now Wogan has sold the land for which he paid about #80 per acre. The
current rate is #120 an acre but he would have expected to get #160 when
he first invested 10 years ago.
Others who bought land for forestry were snooker stars Steve Davis and
Alex Higgins.
Wogan's land was managed by Fountain Forestry and planted mainly with
Sitka spruce and Lodgepole pine. He had planned to sell to a
Lancashire-based businessman, a forestry insider said yesterday, but
Fountain invoked a pre-emption right and bought all three sites instead.
Mr Bruce Taylor, of chartered surveyors Bell Ingram's Ardgay,
Sutherland, office, said there was evidence that plantation owners were
seeing levels of financial return well below expectations.
''They have committed significant amounts of personal income to such
projects in the belief that the capital value of their property would be
well in excess of current market values.''
Forest sales at the 10year stage were common practice but prices were
lower in the Flow Country because of extra problems which included the
danger of wind damage, a 40-year wait for harvesting, and the
difficulties of hauling timber down forest tracks and narrow roads.
The Flow Country hit the headlines when conservationists claimed
forestry was destroying the largest single area of scarce blanket bog in
the world.
It is vital to sustain breeding populations of Dunlin, Greenshank,
Golden Plover, Arctic Skua, and other rare species of birds.
A Fountain Forestry spokesman in Inverness said yesterday: ''Because
of the level of publicity there has been in the past about the Flow
Country controversy, we are not commenting at this time.''
Terry Wogan was on holiday and not available for comment. His
London-based accountant also declined to say anything.
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