Donal Hickey: We need more trees but they need to be the right trees in the right places

State afforestation plans pose extinction risk to threatened farmland birds says BirdWatch Ireland

Killarney National Park stretches across 10,000 hectares (100 square kilometres)

With trees now looking their glorious best, it’s certain many people will be out walking in woodlands during the upcoming June bank holiday.

Apart altogether from admiring the natural beauty of forests and listening to birdsong, there’s also another reason for going down to the woods — it’s good for mental health. We’re told by numerous authorities that trees have a calming effect on people and help reduce stress.

Environmental groups, however, claim trees are all too often planted in the wrong places. Neither do we plant enough native trees like oak: large-scale planting in the last 30 to 50 years has been generally conifers, which many people dislike.

The oak woods of Killarney National Park are a personal favourite and, according to an Office of Public Works publication, these woods have survived intact for at least the past 5,000 years. The park contains the largest remaining areas of native forest in the country.

At the end of the 16th century, Ireland was still a relatively wooded country, and one-eighth of the surface area was covered in forests. The woodlands were particularly extensive in counties Cork, Kerry and Limerick, but large-scale, forest clearance was by then getting underway.

Nowadays, it’s about sustainable forestry, with BirdWatch Ireland complaining to both the Government and the EU that forestry policies here create extinction risks to threatened farmland birds. BirdWatch also wants the EU Commission to ensure “cast-iron safeguards" to avoid planting in habitats of such species.

The 2014-2022 State Aid conditions from the EU Commission required the Government to ensure there would be no planting on environmentally unsuitable sites, such as peatlands and wetlands.

Yet, BirdWatch claims, planting was allowed in just over 20,000 hectares acres which are valuable habitats for six of our most threatened breeding waders, as well as in areas frequented by 28 red and amber-listed farmland birds.

Oonagh Duggan, head of advocacy, at BirdWatch, said the proposed new forestry programme does not contain adequate safeguards to protect habitats for breeding waders and other open countryside birds from afforestation.

“Considering the scale of the lucrative payments available, we anticipate an accelerated loss of important habitats for wild birds and other biodiversity,’’ she warned.

Ms Duggan called on the various ministers responsible to ensure that no further tree planting occurs in farmland bird hotspots and to adhere to EU environmental law.

Forested areas also provide cover for predators such as foxes and the crow family which take the eggs and young of ground-nesting birds like curlew and lapwing. Farmland birds, especially those nesting on ground in open landscapes, are more severely threatened than any other group of birds in Ireland.