Sir. – Is Richard Romer living on the same planet as the rest of us? (Letters, November 22nd).
Wicklow is Ireland’s most tree-covered county with 18 per cent of the total area forested, the vast majority of this is Sitka spruce in dark plantations that stretch as far as the eye can see.
Luckily Wicklow was endowed with a few small pockets of ancient native woodlands, and enlightened property owners and farmers are putting in more under the Native Woodland Scheme, but they tend to be small in scale and make up only a tiny fraction of the overall woodland cover.
Conifers might be more commercial, but we now all know that environmental benefits are of equal importance. It is erroneous to suggest that Sitka plantations are “havens for native mammals, lichen, and fungi”. The dark shade conifer plantations create eliminates all of the ground flora as well as the shrub layer, the understory trees, and the epiphytes when compared with the wonderful biodiverse-layered habitat of native woodlands.
In recent years Coillte has made an effort to increase the boundary screening of its conifer plantations with tubed native trees. However, the success rate is poor at less than 40 per cent due to the use of unsuitable materials and no aftercare.
They have ticked a box and moved on and probably counted these failed native saplings as part of their overall percentage of broadleaves planted. What would Romer regard as a balanced mix between conifers and native broadleaf trees? Surely not the current percentage of conifers that exist here in Wicklow? Let’s hope Pippa Hackett, the Minister with responsibility for forestry will be more farsighted and evenhanded. – Yours, etc,
ZEF KLINKENBERGH,
Glendalough,
Co Wicklow.