Sprucing up the truth: Schools should not be a battleground for vested interests

As public awareness of the negative impacts of industrial forestry has grown, so too has the sector’s efforts to reshape the narrative with stunts like the deeply misleading booklet given to primary school children

Left: About 300,000 hectares of Irish land is covered in a vast monocultural desert consisting of millions of tightly packed Sitka spruce trees. Right: A forest is a complex ecosystem comprising thousands of species operating in an intricate web of interdependence. 

While our children are constantly bombarded with advertising and marketing messages peddled by corporate interests, the one place we might reasonably assume is off limits for such intrusive influence is the classroom.

Our schools should be a bulwark against PR gurus and industry spin doctors. Therefore, it came as a surprise to many people in recent days to discover a campaign promoting commercial timber plantations has sent out material to more than 3,000 Irish primary schools.