Revealed: Trees planted to help achieve net zero are adding to Scotland’s carbon emissions

11 comments
  1. Not to mention the carbon released cutting down forests for wind farms. Digging up the peat ruining the water supply locally.

  2. Is it the money?

    if you’ve got a area of peatland that you get no revenue from (no peat composts any more) and someone gives you grants to plant trees, is that why this is happening!

  3. It’s because recent research has shown that Scotland’s peaty soils are a huge carbon sink. Before this was known, some of those areas have been destroyed in order to plant trees in an effort to offset carbon emissions. Ironic, true. But the article headline is misleading – no surprise, eh?

  4. There is no ‘reject all’ cookie button on the site, so I’m not going there.

    But plabting trees in peatland is stupid thing to do if you want to reduce CO2 emissions

  5. This is a major own goal, if they had planted them somewhere else and not dug up and drained peat bogs to plant these trees those same peat bogs would have drawn a good amount of carbon out of the atmosphere on their own.

    Hope they learn from this and do not repeat these mistakes.

  6. Too many people view planting trees as an inherently good thing. It’s not the case if they’re not if they’re the wrong trees or in the wrong location though.

    To try and fix the fact we’ve destroyed ecosystems, we’re destroying different ones to try and replace the first ones.

    It’s like we refuse to learn (or they’re just being planted to please people because trees = nature = good).

  7. Forest Manager in Scotland here.

    Both poor ground for upland and lowland rough grazing was sold off in the 1970s for commercial planting. Further planting of bog in the flow country was carried out in the 1980s and 1990s before it was fully understood how bad this was. There has been a lot of studies on how to manage this ground going forwards and there has been a lot of back and forth on whether these should be restored to bog habitat or retained. Restoring it requires further ground disturbance which may end up being detrimental in the long run.

    Typically, any new woodland made today has to go through rigorous consultation and testing to ensure new woodlands are not planted on deep peat. It is illegal to plant deep peat which is classed as being more than 0.5m in depth, and generally managers will opt not to plant on this ground anyway.

    Most new woodland creation is broadleaves which are being planted for habitat and amenity woodland. This is being done on a massive scale for the benefit of the environment for carbon sequestration. When I say massive scale, I really mean that it is pushing our industry to it’s knees with the ammount of area and woodland we are trying to deliver.

    The notion that we are adding to carbon emissions is a load of bollocks, we are actively trying to reduce it as much as possible and these types of articles are extremely harmful.

  8. Saplings are being planted but it is mature trees that sequester carbon best, so we might see an improvement but not for decades. It is why preserving ancient woodland is so important, alongside our heathlands, wetlands, moors and peatland. The best carbon capture technology is plants, preservation is just as important as rewilding.

Leave a Reply