Reports  The Earl of Dalkeith We are getting used to the idea of finding ourselves in a new Millennium. It's hard to believe that its seven years now since the Millennium Commission embarked with a blank piece of paper on a consultation quest for ideas about how people across the land might themselves wish this historic milestone to be commemorated. At the time there was feverish speculation about what sounded like vast sums of money - the lottery of course hadn't begun and we'd barely got ourselves together before people were knocking on the door with widely varying visions. Quickest off the mark, and amongst the first I remember clearly, 3 groups who wanted respectively to re-open the old Forth and Clyde and Union Canals, to launch a revolutionary new University for the Highlands and Islands, and a fast growing movement who thought that Scotland's native forests could and should be the focus for a great Millennial initiative. I remember thinking clearly - how on earth are we to choose between them? Well of course in the end we didn't because all three, together with a quintet of science centres, miles of cycleways, scores of community halls, and a host of others, won themselves and for Scotland a share of lottery money far greater than any of us ever imagined possible, some £200 million in all. They won it because of the originality of their vision, the passion of their supporters and the hard headed realism of their administrators and their partner organisations. Together I believe they are creating a portfolio of investments of this new century for Scotland that will do people proud for generations to come. Along with all the others the Millennium Forest for Scotland Trust displayed those qualities in spades but individually they also brought characteristics that we in the Millennium Commission valued enormously, a capacity, in particular to engage people at the grass roots/touch people's lives, urban and rural, across the land. Few perhaps have done this more effectively than the Millennium Forest for Scotland. It has triumphantly lived up to your hopes, our hopes, that it would offer opportunity for individuals and for communities, for young and old, for the expert and the novice to pursue their own initiatives within a holistic, almost historic, view of what a forest could come to mean in people's lives. It has fulfilled a need that many people voiced, that this was a time for putting back, redressing centuries of plunder of our natural environment and landscape. It has done so, however, in a way that is not merely sentimental, but recognises the tangible economic and social benefits our native woodlands will increasingly come to offer. I will always cherish memories of the wonderful variety of projects and the encounters I have had with them over the years. Watching schoolchildren in Kilmarnock acting out a woodland play for instance, sitting in a front room in Abriachan celebrating the community's new involvement in the forests on their doorstep, or being amazed in an office on the Black Isle at the analysis from satellite photography of ancient woodland around my home in Dumfriesshire. The people and their commitment and passion have been the hallmarks of these and all the other projects celebrated in this book, and it will be that spirit which keeps alive the vision of this wonderful millennial project for generations to come.