Motorists in the Highlands face months of traffic disruption as work begins to clear acres of windblown trees above a main arterial route.

Forestry agencies are still clearing trees blown over in the storms of two and three years ago.

One area that suffered damage were forests on the steep slopes above the A82 Inverness to Fort William road at Loch Lochy. A team will begin a ground felling programme on Monday which is likely to last until March.

Alex Macleod, who manages the A82 Project for the Forest Enterprise division of the commission, said resources had only now been freed up to tackle the clear-up at the site.

“This particular site needs quite a bit of clearing up but with our resources focused on the A82 Glen Righ works (south of Fort William), we’ve not been able to make a sustained effort at Loch Lochy to tackle the issue," he said.

“It’s a job that presents its own challenges because clearing trees that have been blown over is dangerous work. A lot of care has to be taken to ensure safety and that means taking our time.”

He said that now the Glen Righ work had finished the felling team would be moved up to Loch Lochy.

He said: “We will try to minimise disruption as much as we can but traffic management will be in place, Monday to Friday, 7.30 – 17.30 throughout the operations and will include short periods of road closure in both directions of up to 10 minutes to ensure public safety.

“We would like to apologise in advance for any inconvenience this might cause and to once again thank road users and the local communities for their on-going understanding and support.”

He said that other felling planned for Allt Sigh on the side of Loch Ness Loch would not begin until 2016 by which time geotechnical teams would have erected fencing to catch any rockfall. This would provide additional protection to the A82 when the tree felling work starts.

A spokesman for the A82 Partnership, the group campaigning for the upgrading of the trunk road from Glasgow to Inverness, said they were are aware of the ongoing forestry work both south of Fort William and on the sides of Loch Lochy and Loch Ness.

“Whilst obviously requiring to be carried out, they are a further inconvenience to A82 road users. We will be seeking a commitment from Forest Enterprise to restrict the 10 minute road closures to outside journey to work times and to ensure monitoring of traffic flows during the periods that traffic management is in place.

“We hope that lessons have been learned from the Glen Righ works where land slips closed the road in the area that similar works were carried out."

But a Forest Enterprise spokesman said: “It is wrong to suggest that the work we have carried out on Glen Righ has caused land slips in the past. These were a direct result of extreme weather events affecting the whole area.”