The left is an “Atlantic Rainforest”, teeming with life. Ireland’s natural state if left to nature. The right is currently what rural Ireland looks like. A monocultural wasteland.
The left is an “Atlantic Rainforest”, teeming with life. Ireland’s natural state if left to nature. The right is currently what rural Ireland looks like. A monocultural wasteland.
29 comments
Supposedly before the plantations, ireland was so dense with forests, a squirrel could go from Dublin to Wexford without touching the ground.
They were then supposedly lost to create british ships used against the spanish armada for example.
I say the dense forest is true but haven’t really seen anything on british ships, however maybe a small part went towards them
There’s a forest near my house that looks exactly like that, except it doesn’t have the saturation dialled up to 10
Lmao all the comments on this thread act as if OP is some tree hugging fool when all he’s stating is that we’ve destroyed our natural habitats in favour of farmland and agriculture…an objective fact.
I’ll go further and say I personally completely agree that it is a monocultural wasteland and a disgrace that we’ve let our biodiversity be ravaged by absolutely unchecked greed and demand for more and more farmland. We’re not saying there shouldn’t be farms or that land doesn’t need to be used for farming but Ireland used to be almost entirely forest, now it’s not even 10% coverage, there’s no balance or fair consideration given to our natural habitats.
Some people here are really overreacting to the (correct) implication that we have lost something vital. I imagine many of the same people would roll their eyes at a post lamenting that we don’t speak Gaeilge.
Government should definitely do more to encourage re-wilding.
It’s the same in the UK. It’s a shame when you can imagine how pretty these isles must have been a few centuries ago. We have a fairly unusual climate. There are still places you can go and visit but they aren’t a part of everyday life.
I’ve also lived in Finland where almost the whole country is entirely forests – even in the capital city, you can take a wrong turn and end up in a little countryside enclave.
Nature is very much part of the culture. Most Finns retreat to summer cottages by lakes in August, where they swim, go to sauna, barbecue, boating, etc. Picking mushrooms and berries is very much a thing there – they have their own verbs for this (sienestää and marjastaa). And it’s 30 minutes by car or less to find wilderness from even the capital area. So for people who are interested in nature for leisure, check it out.
A lot of unnecessary angry responses (maybe it was calling the farming land a monocultural wasteland tho) but I agree there should be a movement towards more reforestation!
Need to look after our little island.
Fun fact (or maybe not so fun): Ireland does not have any fully natural forest habitats. They are all classified as semi-natural (Fossit, 2000) A good example of this is the old oak woodlands in Killarney National Park. They are 100s of years old but if you walk through them you still find old drainage systems, field boundaries and ruined cottages from pre-famine times.
https://www.npws.ie/sites/default/files/publications/pdf/Woodlands%20booklet.pdf
https://www.coillte.ie/a-brief-history-of-irelands-native-woodlands/
Those are some pretty nice little information sources about Ireland’s native forests and why they’ve declined, as well as general fun facts and where to find them if your interested. It’s important to realise that Ireland relied very very heavily on agriculture so much of our land was used for that. Even still the picture on the right is of a field where food would be grown.
A lot of damage was done by the English when they were here cutting down native trees and planting “better ones”. A great example of this is Avondale forest in Wicklow, it is still absolutely beautiful and would recommend visiting if you’re interested in nature. Another example would be Djouce woods, also in Wicklow. The difference is that while the tress in Avondale are left, the ones in Djouce are clear-felled(cut down and removed completely) when they mature. This means they are able to work on restoring the native flora and fauna.
https://www.export.gov/apex/article2?id=Ireland-Agricultural-Sectors
That is some info about how much food-stuffs we import/export and how big a driving force farming is for our economy. So just because forests are pretty and good for the wildlife doesn’t necessarily mean that we should get rid of all our fields, but we definitely need to do something about a lot of them. As far as I know some farmers are able to apply for grants for “wilding” where they leave a field empty and just cut the grass once or twice a year, but I’m not 100% confident on that.
In any case while it’s definitely sad to see that it happened it was a necessary evil for people to survive, but we still have plenty of beautiful, ecologically varied countryside to explore, personal recommendation would be the Wicklow Way which can bring you through Djouce woods as well as Crone woods (definitely not biased being from Wicklow).
ETA : https://www.npws.ie/biodiversity/biodiversity-funding
That’s a link to the funding Irish farms can apply for biodiversity and while I’m no legal/accounting expert, I feel like it’s safe to say there’s not enough.
Been saying this for years. It only serves one species. The sheep. What a waste!
So here’s a bunch of inter-related problems.
We’ve got about the worst biodiversity in the EU, and our farming practices are largely responsible. Now, that may not sound important, but without biodiversity, our ecosystem will collapse. And when our ecosystem collapses, with all the pollinators gone, with nature’s food chains gone … then our food supply will collapse as well, and then civilisation collapses. Some of us think that that would be a Very Bad Thing, and worth avoiding.
We’re among the highest (water, air and land) polluters per capita in the EU, and our farming practices are responsible for a big chunk of that.
Irish farming is in crisis because the subsidies keep getting larger, the average age of farmers keeps getting older, and their kids aren’t that interested in taking over the farms.
A lot (not all, but a lot) of farmers would be happy to reduce their livestock farming and instead cultivate biodiversity, if the funding were there.
But the farming lobby keeps lobbying for higher and higher subsidies to prop up our current broken, polluting system.
https://www.independent.ie/business/farming/poll-half-of-farmers-would-reduce-livestock-if-government-paid-them-42018166.html
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40879088.html
https://findingnature.org.uk/2022/06/06/factors-in-a-failing-relationship-with-nature/
It’s especially disheartening when you consider that the more densely populated countries still have a greater proportion of forest than we do. And yet people claim we’ve run out of space to build on altogether.
For anyone interested in this subject, check out An Irish Atlantic Rainforest. It only came out a couple of *weeks ago
It makes me so sad when I hear the whole country used to be covered in trees.
I don’t think anyone is saying that farming doesn’t hold value (obviously it does). It’s still a shame that that so much of our natural forests were lost and now any attempts to replace them are monoculture for profit businesses that don’t do much for the landscape or Irelands natural habitat.
The other half of our lungs are trees and forests (I know, hippy dippy but true) and serve a role beyond being nice to walk around or even supporting wildlife. They are essential for our survival too. The eye rolling and defensiveness in this thread is odd.
It’s not just land, fish stocks like cod are also down 90%+ and there are huge dead zones in the ocean where nothing can survive.
I’ve always wondered, could I buy an acre of agricultural land and then just plant a load of trees on it?
Is is this allowed?
Edit: an acre of farmland is worth 5-10k. Now whether you can buy 1 acre is something I don’t know
There’s definitely some people in this country who get a hard on just looking at monocultural desolate fields
I come from a very forested area in mainland Europe, with a very similar climate. It makes me sad not seeing forests here. I’m constantly looking over google maps satellite images for forests around me to go walk around
We have become a cow monoculture in this country and honestly if there is ever a shock to the dairy market either through synthesized milk or anything else farmers will be in trouble. The national herd has become a political powder keg and nobody wants to touch it.
Historians will note … “While they managed to create a high tech economy and craft and thread a peace process, they were stumped by the twin challenges of building ample dwellings and planting trees.”
Yes I totally agree. Another thing I notice is that even areas not used for agriculture mostly look like the photo on the right – private yards, parks, open spaces. It’s possible to improve plant, bird, insect biodiversity even in smaller areas like that, and in most cases the space would be easier to maintain than the uniform lawn. It would be great place to improve.
Randal Plunkett is rewilding the 650-hectare (1,600-acre) estate he inherited. Its pretty cool that a 39 year old metalhead is doing it.
Ireland currently has one of the lowest rates of forest cover in Europe, as illustrated on [this map](https://efi.int/sites/default/files/styles/content_fill_w100_x_auto/public/images/maps/forestmap5_50dpi.png?itok=DUlggNZ1) from the European Forest Institute, despite once having forest cover of around 80% of the land area.
Animal agriculture is the [single leading cause of global deforestation](https://www.fao.org/newsroom/detail/cop26-agricultural-expansion-drives-almost-90-percent-of-global-deforestation/en), and this is true in Ireland—forests were primarily cleared to make room for grazing livestock and to grow feed crops. Animal agriculture requires [significantly more](https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/fsn/docs/Wirsenius_et_al_Agric_Syst__Land_use_in_2030.pdf) land, water and energy resources than crop agriculture to produce an equivalent amount of food. Despite claims that our livestock are grass-fed, we import about [5.1 million tonnes](https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/question/2019-05-09/40/) of animal feed annually (primarily from north and south America, driving rainforest destruction abroad).
The large subsidies that currently go towards animal agriculture should be redirected to encourage farmers to switch to crop agriculture or to re-wild their land. There’s more than enough productive land in Ireland to feed the population and to produce crops for export, while still allowing significant areas of land to be re-wilded (including any unproductive land that’s unsuitable for crops).
The livestock sector is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases, one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, one of the leading sources of water pollution, it’s the primary cause of species extinction and it’s the primary cause of deforestation. Probably the most impactful thing any individual can do is to go vegan and encourage others to do the same.
One part of Ireland I hate is that we have no wilderness.
While I get what you’re saying, it’s worth pointing out the picture on the right is someone’s garden. You can see the lawnmower marks…
The entire country looks like a Windows screensaver
I was in Snowdonia in Wales, region is literally more forest than all woodlands in Ireland combined. And the Caledonian Forest in Scotland (wasn’t up there) is also absolutely massive. Alot smaller than it once was but it still makes Kilarney look like a shrubland in comparison. Also the wildlife. Outside of national parks, bogland and the odd coniferous plantations where a few deer are taking refuge in you don’t see many animals in rural Ireland because 90% is field for silage or livestock. And I was raised in the West. There’s fuck all forest cover or wild grasslands for deer so the deer that are here either go to the bog or farmers fields to graze and they hide in the coniferous plantations. So they cause damage to the farmers fields leading to them being shot.
Theres talks of reintroducing the Capercaillie (Capaill Coille in Irish means the Horse of the Woods) a large relative of the red Grouse, looks like a mixture of a Grouse and a Turkey. But these need Scots pine forest to survive. So the reintroduction will be an utter failure.
Theres been talks about our ever growing deer population that’s attacking the few forests we have left because they don’t migrate and have zero access to grassland yet nothing is being done about it. The state of Biodiversity in this country is a joke
The fucking comments in here. Large amount of people trying to make out that anything less than 100% industrial agriculture will inevitably lead to famine.