A new president and chair of the board of trustees have been appointed to the Royal Forestry Society (RFS).

Sir James Scott has taken over as president from Andrew Woods, whose two-year office has come to an end. Sir James has been vice president for two years. He is a previous chairman of the RFS Southern Division. He had an early career as a land agent in Hertfordshire and was editor for Big Farm Weekly. For 30 years he owned and managed the family’s Rotherfield Park estate in East Hampshire which incorporates extensive mixed woodlands.

Kitty Martin has taken over as chair of the board of trustees from Ian Dudley who had served as chair since 2013. Kitty has extensive leadership and governance experience in listed private and charitable organisations and ran two upstream oil and gas services businesses over a period of 25 years. She is a long-standing RFS member and owns and manages woodland in Cumbria and Scotland.

Ben Herbert, who was a trustee of the RFS for nine years until 2015, has become vice president. He owns and manages the Llanarth Estate in Monmouthshire, and has chaired the RFS South East Wales Division and the CLA South Wales Branch.