Global warming

no it's 11% or something, of which around 9% is sitka spruce tree farms for profit. so a couple of % of natural woodland, pretty disgraceful. you even notice it in england how much more natural forest there is. only the tiny island of malta has lower coverage than ireland.

don't know if the stats account for hedgerows or not but they're being destroyed too

Yep we should plant a lot more native broadleaf trees. End this horn we have for sitka. I will disagree about the "never have enough". There clearly is a limit to what we should plant, and where it should be done. None of the supports for landowners are adequate to convert land to forestry. You can see that over the past number of years where plantings have decreased as government supports changed

What Monk says is a more accurate description of Irish woodland than your own. A few percent of native and 9% of spruce plantation.

As for hedgerows, the management encouraged by councils means they have virtually no biodiversity or carbon sequestering value (ie yearly flailing).

Unfortunately most farmers and councils despise hedgerows and take great delight in flailing them to within an inch of their life on an anual basis. This means that most of the valuable fruiting shrubs/trees never get a chance to fruit and so they offer virtually no food value for wildlife. A hedgerow needs to be managed on at least a three years cycle in order to allow at least a third of the hedge to come to fruit.

Irish hedgerows as currently managed are no substitute for the missing native woodlands. A wood itself is not even considered mature until it reaches a few hundred years old of continuous growth and progression, so the loss of native woodland is effectively irreversible.

As to the issue of farmers setting aside an area for native woodland - given the marginal size of many/most Irish farms - this is a luxury most farmers simply cannot afford. If Ireland wants more woodland of biodiversity value the onus has to fall on government to make this possible. Since governments have refused to commit to any environmental policy with a time horizon of more than a few years - the situation with regard to farmers committing to increase native woodland cover, with obligation times of centuries, it can never change.

On the 3 year hedge thing, it's a bloody nightmare to try trim them after that much growth. You really need a saw on a machine to do a proper job. The flail machines just chew it up and delay regrowth

The EU have put pressure on and we aren't allowed plant unproductive land (namely peat soils) any longer as the disturbance to the soil released more emissions than the trees would ever capture. Irelands forestry is now a carbon source - https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/managed-forestry-now-a-carbon-source-rather-than-carbon-sink/

True. Currently worth more to farm though. The forestry incentives are piss poor to convert.

Reviews aren't great. Here's one example

Though improving soil health is a good thing

Agree with all that but modern agriculture, led by those same (or previous generation) of scientists and ecologists have put things where they are. Coupled with the governments of this world directing land owners down certain paths while also demanding high quality, very cheap food and not supporting the primary producers enough in that goal. Therefore they'll try do more with what they have just to stand still.

Back 100 years ago cover crops were sown after tillage, animals out wintered on it, etc. That all was canned as things evolved. Thankfully we're going back that direction. But, the government nearly scuppered it by demanding excessive lie back areas which meant no tillage farmer would allow out wintering resulting in more demands on the grass landmass for winter feed, more winter housing and associated storage of waste. And they made at the time cover crop planting was happening and gave no livestock owners a chance to change tact where they had planned to out winter but then couldn't. Thankfully, sense prevailed