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IRELAND NEEDS TO plant more trees, according to a new government forestry report.
The Forestry Programme report says that the country’s tree-planting targets for 2015, 2016, and 2017 have been missed.
Forests play an important role in helping fight climate change – Ireland’s forests and wood products removed 4.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in 2015, for example.
The government believes more tree-planting will also go some way to help Ireland meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, which it is on course to miss.
According to the report, broadleaf planting has flatlined since 2015. The planting of conifers was increasing up to 2017, at which point planting fell 22% short of its overall target. Up to 2017, landowners chose to plant conifers over broadleaf trees.
Total afforestation figures for the years 2015 – 2017 show that overall planting is 7% less than the target for these years. However, the shortfall in planting for native woodlands, agroforestry (the planting of trees on grazing lands) and forestry for fibre (the planting of trees for energy purposes – such as using the wood for energy sources or fencing products) – combined was much greater at 74%.
The government offers farmers and other landowners payment for allowing trees to be planted on their land. And in a bid to encourage people to plant more trees, the government has increased the rates it will pay for broadleaves to be planted.
The government said it will now pay premium rates to make the planting of certain forms of trees more “attractive to farmers”.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with responsibility for forestry, Andrew Doyle said the increase in grants will promote greater species and habitat diversity, adding that it will allow the government reach its broadleaf planting target of 30%.
The most significant improvements in grant and premium rates are aimed at those planting categories that may prove most attractive to farmers – such as agroforestry and forestry for fibre.
Agro-forestry will allow farmers to plant trees while continuing to graze their animals on the same land. This land use system would be suitable for producing woodfuel or, where appropriate, high quality hardwood timber.
Then there’s the Forestry for Fibre scheme, which aims to boost the production of renewable energy for either domestic or local commercial use.
While more traditional forestry has a rotation of approximately 35 to 40 years, the species planted under the Forestry for Fibre scheme have a rotation of up to 15 years. A payment of €510 per hectare is available each year up to the time the plantation is felled.
Opportunity
Referring to the increased rates now on offer, Doyle said the higher premium rates “will make it even more attractive for farmers to plant trees”, adding:
Farm forestry presents a real opportunity for landowners to increase their income while continuing to farm. Planting part of a farm, perhaps the more remote or more difficult land with trees can introduce a new source of income while allowing landowners to maintain their existing output.
There was controversy earlier in the month relating to the delay in payments to farmers from the state agency Coillte. The organisation said it would have to regain the trust of landowners who took part in the farm-forest partnership scheme and who went without payments for years.
Under the plan, Coillte would plant land with trees and give farmers a cut of the proceeds when the forest was harvested.
The government continually underspent its budget for its afforestation scheme from 2015 until the present day, with an underspend of some €22 million during the first three years of the programme.
This underspend is being put down to the lower than expected demand from landowners. The allocation for 2018 is €106 million.
Doyle said the new measures and increased rates will create the conditions for more forests to be planted, adding that he would encourage “seriously consider afforestation now”.
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We should become a guerilla tree planting nation. You can find free trees everywhere sprouting in places they wont survive long. ( house drains, beside busy footpaths, etc) Where I live its mostly Ash, Sycamore, Horse chestnut and the odd Oak that need “rehoming”. I’ve replanted a few dozen over the years.
@Honeybadger197: that’s a good idea….
@Róisín Daly: If everyone rehomed a few saplings it would make a huge difference. Trees love our climate, so its easy. We used to have 95% tree cover here.
@Honeybadger197:
What was the population when we had 95% tree cover?
@P.J. Nolan: Haven’t seen the census from the time unfortunately. Thanks for (deliberately) missing the point I was making about how easy trees grow here though.
@Honeybadger197:
I used to work for a forestry company, I planted 800-1000 trees per day most days for five months of the year for 16 years.
There will never be large scale planting in this country. They have been giving farmers grants and premiums to plant since the mid nineties with very little success. Among farmers planting has often been seen as a “failure to farm” in a lot of cases the farmer who would plant is the same farmer who would sell and it made way more sense to sell.
Eventually the government gave up on persuading farmers to plant in 2014 and changed the grant structure to allow anyone to buy land and plant it.
business men will buy the cheapest land available to plant it and that’s why the present row in leitrim about non locals buy wall the land has blown out
@P.J. Nolan: bloody hell your a cheery happy person aren’t you
@Tom Harpur:
Ha ha I do my best!!
@P.J. Nolan: I was suggesting we circumvent farmers etc. We have millions of adults here that could simply rehome a few wandering saplings each.
@Honeybadger197: Perhaps we should seek reparation from the UK for building war ships from all our forests?
Make a law were at least every acre of agricultural grass land should have one tree planted in it ..wouldn’t take up much room but would make a big difference to our emissions and our currently deforested country
the government can’t see the wood from the trees -forestry is too concentrated in certain parts of the country especially the west leading to depopulated areas -County Leitrim for example where there won’t be anybody left soon at the rate it’s been planted.
@TheBluffmaster2: That is idiotic ,people are being driven out by trees,we have the lowest forestation in Europe
@Robert Harris:
In fairness Robert the east and South (the best agricultural land in Ireland) has by far the lowest forestation in Europe, that is not necessarily the case in the West.
@P.J. Nolan: correct analysis PJ-Mr Harris would need to loo
@TheBluffmaster2: to look at a map.
@TheBluffmaster2: I live in the west ,Galway actually, and the land is pretty poor, waterlogged full of reeds,planting trees would make better use of it,btw i’ve never met a farmer driven out by tree planting
@Robert Harris: maybe not individual farmers but whole community’s-post offices closing etc…
@Robert Harris:
True, a lot of the land in the West would be more productive in trees, I have planted land where you could walk across the entire farm without stepping off the rushes only to come back a few years after planting and it would be as dry as a bone.
As regards farmers been driven out by planting, farms in Ireland are often very small in nature and any young farmer trying to make a go of it needs to buy/rent. Just like any business as returns per a acre are cut you need more acres to keep your business viable normally you would buy rent your neighbours over time, but as it comes up for sale it’s business people that are buying it to plant.
@Robert Harris: it’s the truth. You need to see it to believe. I live in Leitrim. Nearly 50% of what can be planted, is planted. And planted in 60ft tall Sitka Spruce plantations that nobody wants but the department won’t sanction broadleaf for our land. Even though they’re growing in every hedgerow you see here. Check out Save Leitrim on Facebook and Twitter. And then check out this on the government website. It’s the notice for forestry licences each week. Gives details of exact location townland county acres and trees being planted.
https://www.agriculture.gov.ie/forestservice/publicconsultation/environmentalimpactassessmenteia-publicconsultationforafforestationforestroadconstructionandfellinglicenses2018/february/
@TheBluffmaster2: You are absolutely right about Leitrim. We have a fight on our hands. Vulture funds and others are buying up land and its planted with toxic coniferous species. When a neighbour sells for planting it robs daylight and the land is finished for farming for good. When its cropped its left looking like the battle of the somme. It has all but finished the salmon. The strange bit is that many landowners want to plant hardwoods but it cannot be sanctioned. You cannot call dense pine plantation forests at all. They don’t have any life below the canopies as the floor is killed by lack of daylight. If we planted hardwoods it collective us real forests with diversity. However it takes effort and expertise and we don’t have any of that in our current agents of the policies.
@Patrick J. O’Rourke:
Comes down to profits, you can make far more out of sitka spruce than any other tree.
Sadly, only about 10% of forestry in Ireland is mixed species native woodland. The rest being monoculture or near monoculture tree farms grown as a pension crop then mass cleared. Really not much benefit for climate or the land and wildlife. Add to that, chemical fertilisers dropped and scattered by planes. Trees should never need fertilisers! Hardly any farmers are drawn to the incentive of earning a continuous income from mixed species thinnings. Scotland has created an an amazing branch of it’s tourism, ‘scuse the pun, from its native tree woodlands and forests. I think Ireland could too.
@WoodlandBard: Dont forget the Coillte and conventional forestry practice of insecticide spraying in young concentrated conifer plantations. It all runs off into the nearest river killing off aquatic food chains reducing fish populations.
@Ranty McCrank:
The insecticides used by coillte are largely the same as the one used by farmers and the total amount used in forestry is miniscule in comparison.
@P.J. Nolan: So there is no problem using them?
Ireland is well behind on every schedule.
I can hear the lightbulbs coming on in the Department of Spin
“New Govt policy, Tree Houses!
Which will improve their health by from climbing in and out!”
The government failed to reach a promised goal. They let a group of people down. Somehow this sounds familiar. Vote individuals rather than parties. This nonsense has to stop.
We seem to be way behind everything environment related these days.
It’s not just emissions there are lots of other benefits – flood reduction, storm shelter, soil protection and enrichment, tourism, preservation of wildlife. You should see the fabulous mature tree field borders in England poor Paddy farmer associated trees with stealing his light and nutrients.
They should utilise crops like hemp too
https://medium.com/@dubhempmuseum/could-ireland-use-hemp-as-biomass-9a3eff7fcdcc
@Brian Houlihan: yes, hemp very useful. I live in a lime and hemp home. Kitchen extension is hemp bale construction … all hemp grown in Ireland. On the downside, too much hemp growing would lead to the problems that monoculture crips cause.
It doesn’t help when everyone is busy chopping down trees. Private and public bodies. Loads of trees and hedgerows being removed in East clare, not clear who is doing it.
Plenty of marginal agricultural land could be planted as could large areas of deforested degenerate acidified blanket bog. Also a 50 meter margin along motorways without panoramic views could be planted with alternate 1/2 km of trees like Beech, copper beech, chestnut, oak, lime, Scots pine etc
Ireland is way behind on just about everything
IIT cut down millions of trees that were semimature in the last 3 to 4 years. these were planted on the side the motorways and IIT never replaced them. What a shame.
Tax it that will sort it out.
we dont need trees weve plenty a feckin trees…
@Franky: We have the lowest tree cover rate in Europe. Technically, Ireland is part of the temperate rainforest, denuded of its trees though it may be. The reality is that our government’s plans don’t go anywhere near far enough.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: shut up
How many?
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