Forest area covered 11.8% of Ireland’s land in 2023

6 comments

1. I’ve been hearing this for a long time and I know it’s got a lot of political focus with Coillte etc. what would be interesting to know is it actually increasing?
   Anecdotally I see a lot of new trees planted when I go hiking.

2. Unfortunately only 8% of that forest is regarded as of ‘high natural value’. Most of it is Sitka Spruce plantations which are ecological dead zones.

   https://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-trees-forest-native-6504510-Oct2024/

3. Malta is a dead rock basically, and Netherlands is questionable because they’ve reclaimed lots of land from the sea, so maybe that land is not good for trees (I don’t know). Of “normal” countries Ireland has the by far the lowest forest coverage. That’s dreadful.

   I’m a volunteer with Scouting Ireland and one of the initiatives is replanting native trees. Just this February we got to 8000 tree milestone.

   https://www.scouts.ie/post/scouts-celebrate-45-years-at-lough-dan-with-8-000th-tree-planting

4. Have of this shite is dead Forest too. It’s sad what we’ve done to our country.

5. Ireland’s forest coverage has recovered to approximately 11.6% as of 2024, representing its highest level in over 350 years.

   The lowest forest coverage occurred around the early 20th century, hitting a low point of approximately 1% to 1.5% of the total land area by 1903–1914. Following centuries of deforestation, this minimum was reached just before state-sponsored afforestation began, leaving the country with the lowest forest coverage in Europe.

6. Why does this matter, honestly? Not even trying to ragebait or anything, but why?

   If 100% of Ireland was covered in trees, we’d have a positive +0.8 ish % effect on the world