A news site with ties to the fossil fuel industry claimed Scotland axed 14 million trees to make way for wind farms. Is that correct?

CheckMate is a weekly newsletter from RMIT FactLab which recaps the latest in the world of fact checking and misinformation, drawing on the work of FactLab and its sister organisation, RMIT ABC Fact Check. CheckMate August 19, 2022 This week, we "fell" misleading claims about millions of trees being cleared in Scotland to make way for renewable energy projects. Notably, the omission comes despite the article drawing heavily on a two-year-old story published by Scottish news site The Herald, in which an FLS spokesman was quoted as saying: "That figure for felled trees should also be contrasted with that for the number of trees planted in Scotland over the years 2000 - 2019, a total of 272,000,000, and renewable energy developments fit well with this." He added: "The amount of woodland removed across Scotland's national forests and land, managed by FLS, for wind farm development is not even 1 per cent of the total woodland area", while the 14 million trees were a commercial crop that would ultimately have been felled for timber. "So, a far better calculation, if you were thinking about total energy storage, would be to calculate pumped hydro alongside battery storage," Professor Blackhall said.