Before Christmas I joined a group of friends at a Christmas party and I got into a conversation with a young lady who lives up the mountain near Drumshanbo. She’s lived in the same area all her life and has watched the slow changes occurring as forestry became more prevalent over the last twenty years. And then in the middle of her conversation she just came out and said it as naturally as if it were a given. She said “It’s awful to see all the desertification happening up where I live. Have you seen it?”
I was quite taken aback. I’d always associated the term “desertification” with virgin, old growth forests in tropical regions of the world. I’ve seen it in Australia, where I grew up, and I’ve seen it in Malaysia and Thailand many years ago. I never thought of that term ‘desertification’ applying to conifer plantations in damp old Ireland. Yet I could see how, in this young lady’s mind, that’s how it appeared. She’s articulate, intelligent and bright. She’s not an environmentalist or a ‘green’. She’s not a scientific person. She wouldn’t know that much about forestry, apart form what she sees in her area. But there it was, – her word, her observation.
I thought about her on the way home. The trees were planted and left to grow away, slowly changing the landscape over forty years or so. To someone who grew up in such an area, – that’s what a forest is. And then whamo, just as the trees reach a relatively impressive size, along come big machines and the rapid process of “desertification” occurs, very often on a large scale. Her landscape is dramatically changed very suddenly and she feels the impact of this “desertification”. If she chooses to remain living in the area this young lady will be an elderly lady before she ever sees big trees there again. Kind of sad, I thought. Big trees are just so inspiring to be around. The only big trees around Drumshanbo, and indeed most parts of Cavan/Leitrim, are occasional single trees and ones in the hedgerows. No big trees in the forests. European foresters reading this post will no doubt also think that a strange concept.
Anyone can see by looking at this image that, done this way, plantations will never become a forest. This is what my young friend meant when she used the term 'desertification'.
If Copenhagen was less than what was aimed for, one thing that stood out above all else was that we must preserve forests. Not just virgin, tropical forests that are so under threat, – but all forests. Sequestration of carbon seems to be one powerful way of stemming climate change and forests do that so well.
The main reaction from here, reflected in the media that I read following Copenhagen, was that there was a clammer for the Government to provide more forestry grants; about the re-aforestation grant coming to an end and how will we manage to keep forest land as forest land without it. (Umm, one way seems fairly obvious.) But the message from Copenhagen wasn’t that ‘forestry’ as a land use must be preserved, – that is, the practice of establishing forests and then cutting them down. What they said was ‘forests’ must be preserved. So if the only forests we have are even aged, single species plantations, – then that’s what we must preserve, surely, in order to be part of the solution to this world-effecting problem/crisis. Some readers might find the thought of preserving conifer plantations as a fairly depressing thought, but………
Luckily the plantations that we have are ideally suited to being transformed through skillful management and time, into something quite different. Permanent forests that contain big trees and that produce quality timbers, ad infinitum. That’s our good fortune, should we opt to grasp it.
This was a single species plantation, in Austria. Now look at the beauty of it, and the timber it is still producing. No need to cut it all down. The worlds leading experts are telling us: |Forests must be preserved. Producing quality timber does not have to conflict with forest preservation. Done this way the plantation has been allowed to evolve into a forest, with its unique ability of carbon sequestration.
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great blog post.
Thanks Martin, Recognize the mountain photo?