This afternoon.
The Coinvention Centre, Dublin
Forestry owners hold a protest outside the Convention Centre where the Dáil is sitting over a bureaucratic backlog which has rendered Ireland reduced to importing extra timber from the UK and Europe and left 6,000 forestry owners without a licence.
They literally can’t see the woods from their trees.
IFA President Tim Cullinan said:
“Farmers are being denied the right to manage their forests. They planted their land with the legitimate expectation that they would be able to thin and realise an income during its rotation, but the delays mean that this is no longer a reality for many,”
“This is jeopardising the entire industry, from nurseries to sawmilling, with hundreds of jobs already lost. The increased volume of imported timber is placing the health of the forest estate at unnecessary risk.
Not to mention the economic burden on forest owners who cannot release the equity in their forests or who are watching the value of their timber crop decrease by over €10,000/ha if they cannot get a licence to thin.”
Farmers protest over backlog of 6,000 forestry licences (Independent.ie)
Ireland has one of the lowest numbers of trees per hectare in the Western World. We have even less native trees. Spruce should be banned. Large amounts of Ireland need to be rewilded. Fupp the IFA.
You can fupp the IFA all you like but that won’t get the timber cut. There is something extremely odd going on in the forestry service when they refuse to do what they are paid for. Of course, they’re the same fools that imported diseased ash plants into the country, with the result that we won’t have an ash tree left in twenty years time. Treasonous for sure.
These are spruce plantations that need chopped down first before we can re-wild anything.
Letting them sit there is not good for biodiversity either – they arent native and are acidic to soil stopping companion plants from growing. It needs to be sorted, but this is not the way.
Not sure what ‘this’ is, but the IFA seem to be advocating the continuation and even expansion of sitka forestry, and that’s already an envoronmental catastrophe. Not a single new license should ever be issued for sitka plantations. The IFA are perfectly positioned to advocate a shift to regenerative agricultural policies, but they aren’t showing even the slightest interest.
A forsetry system calculated to be the most damaging to the environment and, like horticulturists looking to dig up bogs, the IFA is four square behind it.
Sitka spruce are doing huge damage to the environment here, should never have been allowed to grow so much of it. The EPA released a report today showing nearly half of our rivers and lakes are polluted, mainly by farming activities. Do you think the IFA would comment on that or is it all about equity?
Looking forward to tomorrow’s The Only Way To Save Our Rivers Is By Letting Us Pump Nitrates Directly Into Them IFA demo.
That tree in the second pic looking nervous, trying not to be noticed.