“R.Retired researcher John Spence, approaching a clearing in the Consl Glen Nature in Fermanagh, near the land border in Northern Ireland with the province of Litrim, says it can be part of Lapland, here. “You can make a movie from the north here and you will not be able to From knowing the difference.
Spence stops to refer to oak trees, the series, the bitola, ash, and the turk, along with a series of rare “cinematic”, wild strawberry shrubs and bedding. There are more than 100 types of trees in this small correction of moderate rainforests alone.
Spence, who spent his career in the search for aquatic ecosystems, says. Small spots are widespread in this area, falling on both sides of the border. Today, this fragment is cordoned off with tightly pineal farms. “When I was young in the fifties of the last century, there was no of this pineal forest,” he says, referring to a network of square pine. “Everything was Morland.”
Trees that “can be classified with any degree of certainty as old” only ” 0.04 % of the lands In Northern Ireland, according to the Woodland Fund. Through the borders in the Irish Republic, Less than 2 % From the original forests and a lower percentage preceding the brutal tudor and Elizabethi permits From the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Environmental scientists all over the island say it is necessary to find, preserve and expand valuable fragments. But this possibility may face a new threat: the rapid expansion of other trees – specifically, wide necks of the submitted pine.
Eddie Mitchell, who lives about 18 miles (30 km) in the province of Litrim, witnessed that the Earth tends to shrink generations of his family. He says there is a feeling of people in the area “they are displaced.”
The acute shortage of housing is a well -documented force that provokes people. But he says that the proposals of new trees can also feel the threat that is looming on the horizon of people and places.
Ireland is the slightest coverage of a tree proportional to any large region in Europe. The Irish Republic has only 11.6 %, and Northern Ireland levels are 8 % less – both are much lower than the European Union average of 38 %. In response, the Irish government plowed more than 1.3 billion euros (One billion pounds) in new forest plans. presence Increase the forest cover 12 % in the decade to 2021, aims to reach a total coverage of 18 % by 2050. Stormont has a greater task on its hands: Northern Ireland will need to increase the rates of eight times its towers by 2039 to meet them legislation Zero goals.
But in remote provinces such as Leitrim, negative memories of the forest engines mixed with anxiety on the decrease in the rural population and the environmental decrease.
Mitchell, an independent representative of the Lever County Council, took a goal for a “Farm” model From the forests, driven by the intensive cultivation of non -original coniferous species, which increasingly attract investors abroad. The spruce in North America, which multiplies here, is synonymous with this “industrial” approach to replace lost forests.
“It is the completely wrong way to continue the matter,” says Mitchell. “More Citca, the most unilateral industrial culture.”
The expansion of the Litrim Forests had serious social effects, according to Mitchell. Some sites have prevented sunlight to reach homes and can let the residents feel “cut”.
He says: “We see the faults as a form of extraction here,” he says.
Timber Fermanag, the director of the Sawmill Glennon Brothers, says, “Timber Fermanagh has” Forestry “in uninterrupted population in the Litrim. He said that some previous agriculture was “wrong” – but the new regulations prevent the new trees that are planted 60 meters from the house, and the farmer should put 15 % of its lands to leave for biological diversity.
Gilinon believes that farmers who plant original solid wood “have sold a story”, given the smaller market for solid wood. He says, “It is the coniferous that pays bills.”
andThe IRST famine then contributed to the decrease in the Leitrim population to 35,000, less than a quarter of the total registered in 1841. One of the lowest rates Each acres of assessments in the Irish Republic. This boycott has made attractive to those looking to expand farms for wood or carbon.
Mitchell says a The number of the town Small settlements have been abandoned throughout Ltrim in recent years, and “marginal” lands – very unproductive land – are increasingly targeted by farms to help reach the ambitious re -modernization targets of the last government.
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Higher: The records are transferred from Manaharmelton, Ireland; Woods are discharged and treated at the Balcas Factory in Enniskillen, North Ireland. Balcas is one of the largest deployed operations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Above: Signs of local environmental campaigns in Manaramonon
As for the remaining old forests, the task is to identify and protect them, according to environmental scientists, to increase their small coverage. Part of difficulty is that many important types, including many types of fungi and algae, lie in the substrate in wetlands and are difficult to determine.
Determining and protecting these rainy fragments would enhance another weapon against the climate crisis, Eoghan DaltuunIt is a restoration farmer on the Berara’s West Cork and the author of the Magic of the Irish Rainforest.
Besides the lack of carbon storage benefits for the original petition, Daltun notes that conifers in North America It can harm peat logos in IrelandAnd they are vital carbon basins. It is concerned about the spread of what happened in Leitrim, which was once among the areas with the most comprehensive original forest cover on the island, but where unilateral mono land is now the original.
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Moss, Lichen and IVY in one of the last rain forests on Ireland in the Carrel Glen Natural, Fermanag Province, Northern Ireland
“From an environmental point of view, it is a catastrophe because these places are dead areas. It is a catastrophe for local communities in areas such as Litrim where people end … surrounded and coordinate these walls of dark death,” says Dalton.
Everyone agrees that it is necessary to stop planting coniferous lthors on the landscape that does not support these non -original species.
“The animal’s life is very poor in these forests,” says Spence. “Sitka Spruce simply does not allow biological diversity to prosper.”
AMitchell refers to the TA website on the outskirts of the city of Litrim in Manaramilton, and refers to groups of fallen fir tree trees – some of which are approximately 45 degrees, some of which are horizontal. He says their roots are struggling to buy in this severe terrain, and they are easily uprooted during storms.
This was evidence in the aftermath Darraj Storm At the end of last year, which removed large groups of coniferous and ease Thousands of homes Without strength for several days. The damage was widespread Tree It was brought to remove the debris. In January, Eyen storm It caused a huge tree and great damage throughout Ireland.
There is a long history of local population resisting forest initiatives that the country and privately leads throughout Litrim. The last participation of speculative financial vehicles abroad, such as Canadian teachers PensionerIn these forest -based land investments, a new force has been presented to the local opposition. In the summer of 2023, activists rupture Sitka Spruce seedlings as part of a demonstration linked to an annual climate event. A popular organization, Save Leitrim, meets regularly to coordinate the opposition for new forest applications.
Irish forest bodies defend the continued cultivation of coniferous trees. “Excellent to combat climate change,” said a semi -governmental company spokesman for The Guardian Sitka Spruce.
The Ireland Social Economic Forest Association, the private sector industry group, says that the highest environmental standards now include protection for swamps and old forest lands, and that all new farms have been evaluated to ensure compliance with the protection of the European Union’s habitats.
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Thomas says early.
Not all forestry initiatives in this part of Ireland feed on local discontent.
Thomas early, a lollipop cow farmer from the southwestern Loew Allen Beach, takes a different approach to restore the Earth. He planted less than 20 acres of his conspiracy with the original ash, Oak and Aldar since 2010, he says, and has provided more than 16,000 trees.
He realizes early that “every person should earn money to some extent”, but he believes that previous forest engines in this part of Ireland were short -sighted.
He says: “The problem is that many of them are only cultivated to harvest the grants from it, instead of the love of trees or the desire to improve the Earth.”
Early says he saw the first appearance of Jay Birds in the forests he planted on his farm and is expected to make it about 50 species of insects and birds that make her home.
He says: “It is clear that Senetka was not the right choice to start.” “Now we have to return and rank [some of] The mistakes made. “
