Trees in Ireland

Carl.Gustav

Hi

Why are there so few trees in ireland, I can imagine a lot would have been cut down for agriculture, but most mountains are bare too.

Thx

Fingalian

Well off the top of my head I would say a demand for timber by an expanding British Empire followed by the introduction of the potato which led to a massive increase in population which needed fuel to keep warm in the winter. Accounts of the country in the 1840's describe it as being like a desert outside of big estates. I reckon our forefathers burnt the place to the ground trying to stay warm.As for mountain areas well marginal areas would have been cultivated too, you can still see the outline of lazy beds in upland areas where today only sheep and hikers roam.No tradition/education of replanting, or coppicing or forestry or proper hedgerow management.But we can change all that.

JupiterKid

Compared to continental European countries such as Germany, Poland and France, Ireland seems very treeless but just a century ago tree cover was only 0.5% of the land cover. Now it is about 11% and growing.

Ireland was once covered in a forest of oak, beech, ash, elm and sycamore thousands of years ago but it was cleared for farming and later on the English cut down the remainder to build their sea going vessels and to rout the Irish resistance to their occupation of the country.

There has been a large scale afforestation programme in places since the 1950s.

There has also been a traditional Irish fear/hatred of trees and forests. It's baffling and a bit sad but it's definitely there in the collective consciousness of rural Ireland.

dogmatix

I have read that originally the mountains where tree covered too but neolithic and bronze age farmers cleared the hills, farmed for a few generations and then abandoned them because the soil was not up to the task. Then a cooler, wetter climate came in allowing raised bogs and peat to get established before the trees could reclaim the land.

Ragnarok Culchie

Most people incorrectly see "nature" or "landscape" as static.

Ireland has experienced periods of glaciation, post-glaciation tundra, taiga-like birch forest, elm forest, pine forest, and so on...

The Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of 10-6000 years ago probably lived mostly on the western and northern coasts of Ireland, subsisting on fish and shellfish mainly. This would have been much easier than trying to hunt in dense forest cover.

The advent of farming five or six thousand years ago required the clearance of some forest. This was usually done on upland areas where it was easier to clear trees from shallower soils. As the earlier posting suggested, these shallow soils were prone to erosion and acidification - "not up to it".

Just as the upland soils began to fail, a change to a wetter climate added to the difficulties. Farmers moved downslope into new valley regions, and began to clear forest here as well. This was probably done by bark-ringing the trees to kill them, as wet temperate forest cannot be fire-cleared.

Most Irish people are not aware that the Burren in Clare is a man-made phenomenon, created by unenlightened farming practices.

Estimates vary, but anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of Irish forests had already been cleared BEFORE aggressive English colonial interventions.

Contrary to popular belief, the last considerable stretches of (oak) woodland did not fall to the axe to build the Royal Navy of James or Elizabeth. These woodlands fell primarily to the needs of the charcoal-maker, the cooper (barrelmaker), and to deny forest cover to guerrilla style "woodkernes", the rump or rebel armies of dispossessed Gaelic chieftains.

The Great Hunger of 1845-48 and its aftermath certainly put paid to any chance for the Irish to have time for trees in the romantic sense. Complete social breakdown saw any readily available fuel claimed.

In fact, most functioning societies in the British Isles over the past 2000 years have managed their forests scrupulously - right down to having laws governing who may gather deadwood, and when. It is a measure of the calamities which have befallen Ireland in both social and economic terms over the past two or three millenniums, that her people seem to see trees as nearly an affront - "where trees grow, no crops can..."

Nolanger

Aren't we all supposed to have a tree somewhere from the Government?

Holybejaysus

I've often wondered that myself. In Scotland, for example, most of the mountains are forested/tree covered. I would imagine that if these were planted, they could be harvested in a few decades for a profit. I know there are certain parts of Ireland (down around the Ring of Kerry/Beara peninsula) that have unique micro-climates that might be suitable for more exotic, expensive types of trees. Maybe it's something that could be economically viable?

*I don't know the first thing about trees, so this is purely my uneducated opinion.