Irish forestry leaves little for nature — the whole sector needs to change 

Forestry is a relatively small business, entirely dependent on taxpayer money and with an outsized environmental footprint. It's time to develop a new model — one that doesn’t depend on destroying our environment to turn a buck, says ecologist Pádraic Fogarty

Irish forestry leaves little for nature. Pictures: Pádraic Fogarty 

It is rare for an industry leader to admit that their business model is fundamentally unsustainable.

While environmentalists have long decried Ireland’s forestry model as an assault on nature, it was perhaps surprising for the director of Forest Industries Ireland, Mark McCauley, to declare last year that “we’re going nowhere on forestry”. The reason he explained, was that there are now too many restrictions on where trees can be planted.