Forestry

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FOREST NETWORK NEWSLETTER
Read all about the main forestry issues in more than 170 issues of the Forest Network Newsletter [FNN] from 2002 to date. FNN deals in depth with current forestry issues from the environmental perspective.

NATIONAL POLICY
Irish forestry policy was set by the 1996 Forest Strategy for Ireland which proposed grant aiding 20,000 hectares a year with up to 100% non-native species permitted. The State Forestry Board, Coillte Teo., is required by Statute to give economic factors more weight than environmental and social ones. Afforestation, currently running at 10,000 hectares a year, now is substantially greater than afforestation, which has fallen to 6,000 hecatares a year. The broadleaf planting rate is claimed to be 30%, but ..

CERTIFICATION
Certification of Coillte Teo’s forestry by the Forest Stewardship Council is the greatest obstacle to changing Ireland’s forestry practices to prevent the ongoing environmental damage. The ‘certificate of good forest management’ has now been renewed until 2011 over FIE’s strongest protests.

ENDANGERED SPECIES
In the water, 90% of the fresh water pearl mussels in Ireland have been extinguished through pollution of our rivers. Heavily fertilised forestry on peat uplands has been called in Government memos ‘the phosphorus time bomb’ for its inevitable pollution as these sites reach clearfelling. See the slide show of maps showing the disappearing mussels.

In the air, the Hen harrier, which was once eradicated, has seen its numbers fall even in the 2003 proposed Special Protection Areas from 134 pairs in 2000 to 105 pairs in 2005. The Parks and Wildlife Service recently agreed to further reducations and to permit farmers to plant their open habitat even within special protection areas designed to preserve this bird.

In four astonishing maps from 1970 to today, track the loss of this bird and the entirely inadequate final areas proposed for protection under the Bird's Directive. Will the European Commission allow this?

CLEARFELL IN IRELAND

FIE studied 3 clearfelling sites on fragile soils in the south-west of Ireland in 2007. Water poured over and around straw bales intended to trap sediments and flooded onto roads and into watercourses. Deep rutting of heavy machinery left irreparable soil damage reminsicent of battlefield conditions. In one case, even the birches originally planted as a buffer zone were felled.

Clearfell Reports

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