18% target for forest cover by 2050 - how to get there?

You could just picture the Sitka dead zones

Of course it could be done better.

It won't be though. It'll be plantations of sitka for export

Spot on blue 2000.

Nobody seems to talk about wall to wall ryegrass or barley or wheat!

Really - i think there is much talk about issues with forced monoculture PRG swards regarding heavy Chem N inputs, worm burdens in stock etc.

In the worst example of fake news I have seen in the Irish media, the Irish Times has withdrawn an article it published with the headline : “Coillte commits to planting native tree species only from 2025 on”.

That would have been extraordinary news in the forestry sector except that Coillte has made no commitment bearing any resemblance to this headline. In fact, Coillte’s policy is that it hopes to “enable the creation of 100,000 hectares of new forests by 2050, half of which will be native woodlands”.

So the facts are:

no “commitment”, only an aspiration.

Not next year but in a quarter of a century.

Not all, just half.

This fake news is not a typo or a technical error or a misunderstanding. It seems to be a story invented out of thin air by the Irish Times. Or did someone deliberately mislead the Irish Time? If so, did the Times not fact check?

The Irish Times offers its readers no apology for misleading them so badly and no explanation for how this fiasco happened. If I read it on Facebook. I’d think “serve me right for clicking that link!

Of course fake news travels fast and this fake news is already on social media.

Coillte and native tree species: Correctionhttps://www.irishtimes.com/business/2024/03/18/coillte-and-native-tree-species-correction/

If they had made such a commitment it would have indicated a complete withdrawal from the real world and commonsense. The Board would have been dismissed.

Here's the original story. A hoax Press Release was sent to the IT, claiming to be from Coillte.

What a shambles for the IT to run this gob-smacking story without picking up the phone to Coillte!

Still no apology or explanation.

Surely this is worse than publishing nonsense about "cultural appropriation" and fake tanning.

Thats like saying the ESB are doing a great job making huge profits via gouging their customers as widely reported in the media recently. Most forestry operations these days are highly automated so Coillte is providing no great employment for the ongoing damage they do to rural communities or the environment which has an ongoing large negative economic impact of its own. Given the p*ss poor quality of much of their plantations alot of there "turnover" consists of low grade pulp. In contrast Ireland has to import nearly all its hardwood and timber construction needs, much of it coming from illegal rainforest destruction in the likes of Myanmar, DRC etc. thanx to the failure of Coillte and the state forestry service to make any efforts to develop the sector over the course of now 80 plus years. In contrast the likes of France have community hardwood forests that are selectively harvested on a tree by tree basis without destructive clearcutting methods so beloved here. In turn this brings in serious income for whole communties with French Oak currently making eyewatering money on the likes of the Chinese market.

If the Irish state, as representative of Irish society in general, truly considers extensive native woodland and forests to be a worthy aspiration,(which it undoubtedly is, on a national scale), they need to put their money where their mouth is if they want to make it happen.

Coillte are constrained to the land area they already have, and even though they are (slowly) converting some of it from conifer to broadleaves, I suspect a fair amount of their area that was historically planted on bare mountain peatland and the like will probably not be replanted after harvest and at best will be 'managed' towards rewilding. The same goes for deeper lowland peatlands that should never have been planted in the first place.

No sane private landowner is going to commit their land, no matter how poor to middling it is for agricultural purposes, to mixed broadleaf woodland which has no prospect whatsoever of generating any sort of meaningful income in a timescale that's measured in human generations.

Like it or not, the days of the independently wealthy great estate owner who could dedicate a significant area of land to altruistic endeavours like rewilding or the establishment of native forests are long gone.

So, if The State wants more land under native broadleaf forest than currently exists, it (The State) must make it economically viable for individual private landowners to plant such forests. Altruism and 'the greater good' and such are all fine and dandy, but at the level of the individual landowner, they put no spuds on the table. This is why spruce plantations are the standard: they hold out the reasonable prospect of generating a significant income during the lifetime of the original landowner.

At the very least, if The State really and truly wants all native broadleaf forests, it must provide for an ongoing income broadly comparable with the agricultural potential of the land in question. And, given the timescales involved, that 'income' must be index-linked and multi-generational too. Let it be considered a 'wage' for managing and maintaining the lovely new woodland and facilitating public access or somesuch, but in all reality, no individual landowner is going to commit their land to this purpose without something along these lines.

Another alternative, of course, would be for The State to use the CPO (Compulsory Purchase Order) system to take ownership of suitable lands for this purpose and create true extensive 'National Parks' managed as such. The Constitutional and legal hurdles involved would be considerable, to say the very least.

Perhaps my we are insane here in Tang,

"No sane private landowner is going to commit their land, no matter how poor to middling it is for agricultural purposes, to mixed broadleaf woodland which has no prospect whatsoever of generating any sort of meaningful income in a timescale that's measured in human generations."

We have 33Ha planted with a very diverse mix of broadleaves and some conifers (scots. larch, norway).

Our forest is a popular destination for Knowledge Transfer Groups.

Having started planting in 1996, we now generate income from our forest. How you might ask? We add value to all of our produce before sale. The firewood we sell is cut and split our customers mostly season the wood themselves (they simply keep a suitable stock so that the timber is dry by the time it is burnt). We make charcoal for smelters and smiths from the tops of the trees material below 75mm dia that is unsuitable for firewood. We have a small sawmill and produce larch fenceposts and trailer floors. We also saw some of our hardwoods at small diameters and can sell this produce, recently I sold a load of 6mm Ash veneer to a man who used it to finish the interior of a camper van. We provide pioneering poles and amenity to scout groups. We provide sawmilling services to folk who want to have some timber cut up (one of my customers runs a "Glamping" operation and regularly turns up with logs to be sawn). We do all of the forest operations ourselves and so earn "wages" getting the grant money for various forest operations Thinning and tending etc.

It is not all a bed of roses of course, we have faced significant difficulties over this time, but we overcome. Ash dieback is a bit of a disaster for us, and we have just applied for the reconstitution grant, we will do all of the felling and timber removal ourselves and have our forestry company (SWS forestry) look after replanting. The reconstitution grant works out at about €1/tree felled, and we will be able to sell the timber for firewood and some of the larger stuff as planks. I have learned that proffessional tree planters are worth the investment as they are much faster and get better survival rates than we can achieve ourselves, we learned this through experience having tried planting ourselves in the past.

To get over the problem of the loss of 27 years of growing time we will plant some 12 year old whips of high value trees when we replant to recover some of the lost increment, perhaps 50 stems/Ha.

Am I insane??

Tim

Thank you for your clarification, you are of course correct.

I would point out however that in France and other places where continuous cover forestry is practiced, incomes of €500/Ha/Yr are typical from the sale (Standing) of quality hardwood. This would of course require an industrial base to consume that quality hardwood which is sadly lacking on our green little island.

Tim

The forest coverage in Ireland is shocking and while hedgerows help a bit, it is no way comparable to a forest. Not all species living in woods can live in hedgerows only.

The target is too ambitious but my main problem is what is their plan to achieve it?

In my view, you need the 2 main components below to succeed:

• Change mentality. The country is in this situation for decades and people grew up in this environment so they don’t see it as a problem. You still hear too often that planting trees in good land is a waste and trees should only be planted in marginal land.You need to change the mentality by teaching it at schools, doing campaign, etc. It takes time.
• There needs to be some short term benefits for farmers. You can’t simply say “plant good lands”. They need to be able to get some income from it to mitigate the original loss. It starts with making felling a lot easier and faster. We all know increasing forest coverage is a good thing but everyone needs to contribute. Not only farmers, but also the State and the taxpayers. It can be subsidies covering majority of he loss for the farmers.

So 'the more you put in the more you get out' is a principle that only applies where thee are not monocultures!!

What then about the guy beside me with 250 acres of your beloved hardwoods. The whole place grew very badly and there must be 100 acres plus of ash in that - all dying or dead for years. Some 5 years ago he was not allowed clearfell the ash when a blind man could see it was the only sensible thing to do.

Natural open forests of Pine are a million miles away from the type of closely planted sterile monoculture spruce plantations favored by the industry here - any comparison between them is simply not valid in terms of biodiversity, water quality issues and timber quality etc.

It will all be down to money.

If the bottom falls out of food production in Ireland, and there is money to be made from forestry, you'll see things change rapidly. If there is money to be made, a shortage of sawmills won't be a problem.

If traditional dairy and tillage continues to be profitable, there will be no appetite for change.