The Pro Silva group in discussion in the forest at Baronscourt, County Tyrone

The long awaited visit of Pro Silva Ireland (PSI) to Baronscourt Estate near Newtownstewart, County Tyrone was well worth the wait. In keeping with PSI tradition, two foreign experts were invited over to Ireland to join us on the day.  Brice De Turckheim, a forest owner and forester with many years of experience in close-to-nature management and one of the founding members of Pro Silva Europe , came from Alsace on France’s eastern border adjacent to Germany and Switzerland. Phil Morgan is an independent forest manager from Wales and works with Selectfor. He is an active member of Pro Silva Europe through the CCFG in the UK and he is forestry consultant at Baronscourt. Phil is a fluent French speaker and translated for Brice on the day. Between them Brice and Phil fielded our many questions with such clarity and the ease that comes with years of time spent in forests.

Sitka spruce regeneration moving in after severe wind throw 8 years ago.

Baronscourt has been the home of the Duke of Abercorn’s family since 1612. The Estate woodlands extend to approximately 1,450 hectares of which approximately 300 hectares are leased to the NI Forest Service and the remainder are managed in-hand by the Estate’s Head Forester, Jim Simpson. In 2001, following a trip with Pro Silva Ireland to Lower Saxony, it was decided to discontinue clear-felling the in-hand woodlands and instead transform to continuous-cover/close-to-nature. A quarter of these woodlands are now thinned each year and the stops included visits to woodlands that have been thinned twice with the intention of retaining tree cover in perpetuity. The presence of Japanese sika deer and Rhododendron ponticum provide significant management issues and lengthy discussions ensued on the day.

Brice De Turckheim arrived in the dark the night before.  He needed only a few minutes to observe his surroundings at the first stop before answering questions. His first observation was that ‘this is a wind-managed forest’. One of the main deciding factors of the Estate to change their management to ccf/close-to-nature was the incidence of windthrow in their even-aged conifer plantations.

Notice the size variation of the regeneration. You can imagine how much more stable this forest is becoming as its structure is allowed to develop.

While Baronscourt is predominantly made up of ‘sensible sitka’ at present, the owners are not attached to trying to keep the estate as pure sitka.  As broadleaves seed into the forest, they are favoured because they are so in the minority. But that will change over time. Ultimately it is quality of timber and forest health that will guide the forest management here.

This area, originally planted with Scots pine, was hit by Hurricane Debbie in 1964. Southern beech, birch, oak have seeded in.

The presence of deer is a big issue at Baronscourt, especially of course for the broadleaved species.  Some areas have been fenced to exclude the deer and here we see again the reality of what the presence of high deer numbers in a forest effects:

Lush regeneration of many species happily growing inside the deer exclusion fence while outside the fence is bare.

As at many of the forest trips organized by Pro Silva in Ireland, the subject of log sizes came up.  In ccf/close-to-nature management the aim is to only fell large trees, as they are worth more and of course the overall increment of the forest is higher. The Irish sawmills have adapted to suit what is offered for sale, so in Ireland what is offered is small dimension (by European standards) logs.  Estate Manager Robert Scott told us that they are lucky to have a mill nearby that operates a ban saw and can take large logs.

Brice gave a wonderful response to this subject.  He said that man has no control over nature but has control over technology.  (You simply can’t argue with that statement.) Therefore adapt the technology to both serve the forest and to harvest timber wisely.  Growers must create big trees and then the mills will sort out the technology needed to mill them. Foresters need to have vision for the future to grow big trees, he said.  If you harvest small trees you must harvest in larger groups and the larger the group the less diversity comes to the forest. So there is less disturbance to the forest if you just select the large trees and then the forest becomes more stable and less at risk of wind. There were many wonderful such offerings from Brice and Phil during the day as they shared their knowledge and experience with us.

From left: Estate Manager (and former Chairman of PSI) Robert Scott, Phil Morgan, Brice De Turckheim and Baronscourt Forest Manager Jim Simpson

I love that Pro Silva brings to Ireland foresters from countries where there is an unbroken forestry culture for hundreds of years. We are just beginning to grow a forest culture here and need to somehow develop this long term view.  We cannot do that on our own. We need the help of others who have the culture, the tradition and the knowledge.

We stopped at another forest area where the wind had felled a huge gap in 1998, leaving only a few large trees still standing.   I remembered fondly when PSI had it’s first forest trip to Baronscourt in 2001 when our guests had been Prof. Hans Jurgen Otto from Lower Saxony and Talis Kalnars, now deceased, from Wales.  At that time this site was bare of trees and the question from Robert Scott and Jim Simpson was ‘Do we plant?’  A resounding ‘No!’ had been the reply from our two foreign experts. ‘Just wait and see what comes in.’  I remember us all looking doubtfully at this huge area of bare, grassy ground.

The same area, 8 years later, is now thick with wind-firm self sown trees.

But here it is eight years later, teeming with bright young self-sown trees.

Brice and Phil spoke about the importance of keeping the remaining tall trees. They are the strong ones that withstood the storm winds.  Their presence will help with the stability of the entire forest into the future. You must manage for diversity and continue to be directed by the forest itself, he said.

On our way back to our cars, we stopped on a high place to recap on the day.  Looking out over the increasingly diverse and lush forest landscapes that is Baronscourt Estate we could see in the distance forests managed by the Forest Service. They had a sad, almost agricultural appearance with their tall crop of sitka offering up such enormous potential, and the tell tale bare ground of the clearfelling practice that will soon sweep them all away.

Meanwhile in the background, the 'same old same old' of even aged conifers carve up the landscapes with their hard lines as they wait to be felled completely.

We received a warm welcome and wonderful hospitality from the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn. I couldn’t really find the words to express to them the significance of the step they and their son Lord Hamilton, have made in this leap of faith eight years ago to try something that had not been tried here. They didn’t do it in a nervous, small way.  They saw the sense of it through the trips with Pro Silva and they took up the recommendations and applied them to the whole forest estate. It is wonderful to see, and we’re told we’re welcome back, so look out for future PSI visits there over the years.

I can’t finish this post without mention of the Pushkin Trust project that the Duchess has been working on since its launch in 1987. Trust endeavours to unite children, their parents and educators, north and south, in the common bond of creativity. Take a look on the link, – it is so inspiring.

The Pushkim House built entirely from timbers grown on the Estate

I’m reading The Wild Trees at the moment about the giant redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) that grow along the north coast of California.  It’s an enjoyable read, – as much about the people who climb these trees as about the trees themselves.  Richard Preston gives a great description of the root structures of these conifer trees and it illustrates more of what was written about forest stability in my last post

‘A redwood tree sits on a flat pancake of roots, spreading in all directions away from a tree.  A redwood has no taproot. A taproot is a strong, vertical root, shaped like a carrot, that stabs straight down under a tree and acts as an anchor, helping to keep the tree upright.  The pancake roots under a redwood spreads out and narrows down into a fine, dense mat of threads no more than about two feet thick.  These fine roots extend outward for unknown distances from the tree, perhaps a hundred yards or more.  They eventually merge with the threadlike roots of other redwoods, forming a tangled mat of roots. The roots of a redwood forest resemble a pad made of felt.  The pad seems to support all the redwoods that are in a stand; they are all anchored by the common mat.’

I thought it was interesting to find that quote, and it helps to explain more fully the nature of conifers and why they often blow over in storms here.

And, – by total coincidence, my partner Gabriel was in California last week, visiting his son, Narayan, who is living there at present. They decided to head out of LA and drive north along the coast. They spent a few days in amongst the other redwoods (sequoiadendron gigantium) – some of the largest trees on earth.  Look at these for shots:

The tree that is called General Grant

Narayan at the base of the sequoia that is called General Grant

How wonderful to see this enormous tree growing at home amongst other naturally occurring trees of all sizes and varied species.

Seeing these pictures makes me question yet again why we place no value on big trees here, and why we keep cutting down our own forests before they have a chance to mature.

No big trees likely here. Sad land where a plantation has been clear cut. Drumshanbo, Co. Leitrim

One of the few even aged conifer plantations in Slovenia was blown down in just 10 minutes.

People have seen the damage that the strong Atlantic winds can cause to a conifer plantation but we have nothing else to compare against this because the only commercial ‘forests’ we have here are conifer plantations.

But stop to think about it.  The remnant old growth forests are in the ‘ancient’ category.  That is, they’ve been here a long time. Therefore they didn’t blow over during their long lives in the strong Atlantic winds. Although ancient woodlands cover only about  1% of the country, we all know this has nothing to do with strong winds.

So how come remnant strip woodlands in the hedgerows and this scattering of old growth forests didn’t blow over?  The answer, – because they have achieved the knack of stability. Here’s a good example to illustrate how that works:

My good friends Cathy Fitzgerald and her husband Martin were making a roadway through their spruce and alder forest last year. Martin cut down the trees with his chainsaw then came back with a mini digger and uprooted the stumps.  No problem with the spruce. The roots were shallow and flat and lifted out with ease.

The shallow and flat root system of spruce doesn't grip the earth well on its own.

However the alder were a different matter.  Their strong tap roots anchored them deep into the ground. No amount of work with the mini digger could shift them. Martin had to dig around their base with a pick and cut through the root with the saw.

So this shows us one amazing yet simple strategy employed in a natural forest to effect its own stability against strong winds. Some species’ roots balance on the surface and others serve the purpose of fastening down the forest so it can stand up to the ravages of time. 

To achieve an irregular forest system from a regular spruce plantation, thinning is vital and needs to be approached in a different way.

In regular forestry the aim is to end up with all big trees of the same size. But when we consult with nature we find that this is not the way to make a forest to last. Natures forests are made up of trees of all sizes and of many species. Everything looks chaotic and irregular. Yet somehow it works. They don’t blow down. 

To follow nature’s method is not to try to replicate an old growth forest.  Rather it is to use the principles nature employs to achieve this stability.  Allow the native species to come in that will help to stabilize the forest. Thin to keep a mixture of both large trees and smaller ones. Favour species diversity. Avoid regular spacing throughout the forest by not having that as the focus. Suffer the early wind damage that may occur during the transformation stage, – it’s not a disaster and once the forest is truly established wind damage ceases to be such a problem.

Willem Pleines from Pro Silva Switzerland stands in the centre of a windthrow gap. The same storm took out 50% of even aged forest in this area, yet this small gap is the only damage that occurred in this close-to-nature forest. Freudenstadt, Black Forest, Germany.