ENHANCING AND RESTORING Ireland’s biodiversity forestry has never been more relevant in terms of the challenges of our time – climate change and biodiversity loss. With increasing recognition of the benefits that trees and sustainably managed forests can deliver, Coillte is delivering innovative nature conservation projects across Ireland enabling solutions to many of our climate challenges.
The Coillte estate (440,000 hectares) consists of a rich tapestry of different habitats, many of which are important for nature and wildlife. These habitats range from several different types of forests, conifer, broadleaf, mixed forest and native woodlands, to peatlands, uplands, lakes and rivers.
Since 2001, Coillte has managed 20% of its estate primarily for nature and biodiversity, and it is on target to increase this to 30% by the end of 2025. Coillte’s longer-term ambition is to transform areas of its forest estate so that up to 50% is managed primarily for nature.
In order to achieve this, Coillte first needed a greater understanding of the current biodiversity within its forest estate, by conducting ecological assessments of habitats such as forests, uplands and peatlands.
Coillte ecologists have identified and extensively mapped biodiversity areas across the country and prioritised them for conservation using a science-based ecological assessment called the BioClass system. They then develop Biodiversity Area Management Plans to identify the appropriate management actions needed to enhance and restore biodiversity value.
Biodiversity areas vary widely in terms of their ecological value and their management requirements. While some biodiversity areas contain habitats of high nature conservation value that are in excellent condition, and require little or no management, others show potential to develop into more valuable habitats over time and require the support of active management plans.
Coillte’s nature ambitions often require the implementation of practices known as Continuous Cover Forestry (CCF) which involves the removal of individual trees to create gaps in the forest canopy to promote natural regeneration of trees and increase the diversity of plants on the forest floor.
Habitat restoration works often involve the removal of invasive plants such as Rhododendron and cherry laurel. In recent years Coillte, in partnership with the EU LIFE Nature programme, has restored over 3,000 hectares of Ireland’s most ecologically important blanket bog and raised bog habitats and over 500 hectares of priority woodland and are currently working on sand dune restoration projects in Counties Wexford and Donegal.
Coillte is also delivering large-scale restoration, projects such as ecological restoration of one of Ireland’s rarest habitats, alluvial woodlands, in Hazelwood in Co. Sligo, along with the restoration of a native forest in Lickeen in Co. Kerry and Cornagillagh in Leitrim.
Although Coillte’s biodiversity areas are managed ‘primarily’ for nature, there is still a significant level of biodiversity value in other areas of the forest estate; and while these areas may have a primary objective of ‘wood production’ or ‘recreation’, Coillte protects nature, these important habitats and biodiversity features across all of its forests under management.
Well managed forests can deliver the multiple objectives of climate, nature, wood and people providing economic, environmental and social benefits. Coillte’s approach is to balance these forest objectives and in doing so to create more forests, protect nature at scale and in the most sensitive locations with the right objective, in the right place, with the right tree.
Much has been achieved over the past century by Irish foresters working to grow forest cover across the country and today working closely with ecologists managing forests for nature is well underway.
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