The coast northwards from Thallabawn forms a good slice of Co Mayo's Wild Atlantic Way. An expanse of windswept, often rushy fields stretches as far as Louisburgh, with a greener, lusher fringe onwards in the shelter of Clew Bay. The road offers long, wide-open views of the ocean and its islands, and of mountains, near and far. But how long before we can't see the sea for the trees?
A map in the spring edition of Teagasc's journal TResearch accompanies an article, "The potential availability of land for afforestation in the Republic of Ireland", by Niall Farrelly and Gerhardt Gallagher. Both are eminent foresters, and Dr Gallagher developed the first model of carbon uptake in Irish forests.
Their challenge was to find enough spare land for forestry to help soak up the extra greenhouse gases from new agricultural-production targets (mostly lots more cattle) set by the Government. To achieve a “carbon-neutral agricultural sector” by 2050, planting is to be expanded to some 1.25 million hectares, or 18 per cent of the Republic. This would mean planting 16,000 hectares a year to 2046.
"Whether such planting rates are possible," said the authors' original paper (in Irish Forestry 2015, volume 72), "is very uncertain, given the recent decline in afforestation from 23,000 hectares per year to just over 6,200 hectares in 2013; significant efforts will be necessary to stimulate land-use change . . ."
To find the extra hectares meant poring over the national map of land use, using a geographic information system and lots of current data, to exclude everything from sprawling suburbs and profitable farming to unsuitable soils, fishery-sensitive areas and nature conservation zones. It came down to patches, some quite extensive, of marginal and unimproved land, such as hillsides, around, and among, the Republic’s good farms.
Much of it is in Cos Monaghan, Cavan and Leitrim, with more big patches in Cos Kerry, Limerick and west Cork. But the stretches of Atlantic coast also catch my eye, from the blobs of pale green at the north of the Mullet Peninsula and south of Louisburgh to much of coastal Clare, right down to Loop Head, the tip of the Dingle Peninsula and at the ends of scenic promontories of west Co Cork.
The is the first such study in 25 years, but for all the “multiple data sets” it takes into account the changing climate does not figure. “Wind” and “storm” appear nowhere, nor the “windthrow” that has toppled so many thousands of trees in rain-soaked soils. Quite aside from what blocks of conifers can do to the scenery, the greatly increased risk of such losses must surely deter much private investment in planting.
Irish forestry was privatised in the 1980s, with the introduction of EU-subsidised grants to farmers for professional planting and the first 20 years of maintenance.
One aim was to encourage forestry on better land rather than on peatland. Farmers and investor interests did indeed respond, reaching a peak of annual planting – more than 17,000 hectares – in 1995. The State's share of forests, run by Coillte, has fallen from 85 per cent in 1980 to not much more than 50 per cent.
Forests now cover more than 10 per cent of the land, and the shift to private ownership on better soils has improved the share of broadleaves to some 30 per cent by 2012. But many of the 20,000 new owners had no interest beyond the grants, no knowledge of forestry management, and not much real desire to grow trees.
Even though ultimately profitable timber is the obvious hope, Teagasc estimates that only some 6,000 hectares of the private plantations are being thinned annually to achieve commercial yields. On the other hand, stands left unthinned are less at risk of windthrow.
Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine still lead the forest species most tolerant of constant coastal wind, but how they are grown or mixed with broadleaves could be heading for change to “continuous cover forestry”, or CCF. In this system, widely promoted in Europe after wind damage in the 1990s, only single or small groups of trees are removed at intervals, allowing an understorey of younger trees to develop. This “close to nature” approach keeps a continuous forest cover, ending the clear-felling and replanting that has scarred so many landscapes.
While some 10,600 hectares of forest are now under some form of CCF, notably in private holdings in Co Wicklow, how it might fit conditions on the Atlantic coast remains to be seen. CCF is now also management policy in Coillte’s broadleaf forests and “amenity areas”, such as Gougane Forest, in Co Cork. In north Mayo, beside Ballycroy National Park, it has abandoned a mountainside of regenerating lodgepole pine to nature’s own version of CCF. Its tangled branches will be given to “challenging and adventurous recreation” for those tired of looking at the sea.
Michael Viney's Reflections on Another Life, a selection of columns from the past four decades, is available from irishtimes.com/irishtimesbooks