Lack Of Trees In Irish And British Countrysides

TV documentaries and travelogues reveal a lot of lush "green" in those countrysides but a relative scarcity of trees. Is it climate? Too windy in Ireland? Sheep and/or other livestock?

Reply to
Way Back Jack
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I read somewhere (I think it might have been in Winston Churchill's "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples") that a medieval king of England ordered the planting of oaks so that a later generation might have the raw materials to build war ships. However, trees take up land that might instead be used for crops or pastures.

On my own standard tract lot, I have 14 trees. Some are trees only in name. Three are dwarf citrus and will never be tree-like. But nine of them are truly trees in size and shape.

Reply to
David E. Ross

"O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree For it stood on your shore for many's the long day Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.

"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand And the more I think on you the more I think long If I had you now as I had once before All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.

"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?" For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."

"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand And the more I think on you the more I think long If I had you now as I had once before All the Lords of Old England would not purchase Portmore."

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Castle was destroyed in 1716. The song dates to about 1745.

Reply to
J. Clarke

My assumption would be the same situation as The Epic of Gilgamesh. In that myth Gilgamesh sets out to appease the God of the Forest and thereby gain immortality. Gilgamesh is a hero of ancient Sumeria, but over the centuries Gilgamesh fell upon hard times. You see, Sumeria's power was based on the manufacture of bronze, which required large amounts of fuel. The original hardwood forests of Mesopotamia offered unlimited fuel, and Sumeria's power was a result of harvesting that fuel to manufacture bronze weapons and tools. But over the centuries the trees were harvested and woodcutters had to travel farther and farther to harvest fuel. This is known as the law of diminishing returns. The original lesson in unsutustainable economics. The Sumerians didn't know about ecology or economics, so an angry God was punishing them for destroying the forest. In the end, Sumeria meets her extinction and Gilgamesh is shown to be a mortal. The god of the forest destroys Sumeria and to this day that region is essentially desert. The Epic of Gilgamesh is the first documented case of a human caused environmental disaster.

The Romans continued the tradition of unlimited military conquest to feed their need for fuel. By that time iron was the metal of choice. Iron required more heat than bronze, and soon the hardwood forests of the Mediterranean were depleted. Because of their proximity to waterways, the British Isles were targeted to supply hardwood for metal smelting. Once the trees were harvested, sheep and goats ensured the forest could not regrow. A large part of the poverty in Europe through the centuries was the result of the stripping of resources by the Romans. Most people are willig to give the Romans credit for building good roads, but in reality those roads would not have been built if there was not fuel to harvest and transport to the smelter.

Ironically, the United States is repeating the same pattern now with petroleum. We have a state-sponsored military that enforces the harvesting of a fuel and we are leaving nothing for them in return. It seems the human race has learned very little from history, and at this rate history will have very little good to say about the United States.

-- Gnarlodious

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Reply to
Gnarlodious

A few thousand years of human habitation and their domestic animals has greatly reduced the trees. Prior to high densities of humans much of Europe was heavily forested as the gulf stream moderates the temperature considerably compared to similar latitudes in Asia or America.

David

Reply to
David Hare-Scott

Long story short, the British built ships with which to conquer and colonize the world.

Reply to
Billy

Ireland was covered in trees before the English needed timber to built the fleet that fought the Spanish Armada.

Nik

Reply to
Someone else

I've not noticed a lack of trees in most of Britain when I've been there. The north western parts of Scotland certainly lack trees and the vegetation of the Burren in Ireland is well known internationally (but not for it's trees). Scotland used to be covered by the Calidonian Forest and had wolves and beaver but I can't recall why it went belly up. Ireland suffered from ice coverage during the Ice Ages so any trees there had to come back as pioneer species.

Large numbers of people, 'modern farming' and trees don't go together. As the population grew the trees would have had to go, or in some instances, 'modern farming' methods were the cause of clearance too. Ireland's population exploded after the introduction of the potato and you can't grow spuds in forests so even if there had been a desire to grow more trees, there would have been a strong disincentive to do so.

Reply to
FarmI

One factor is this: The EU has been paying farmers to cut down trees for a long time. I think it is now paying people to plant them again.

Reply to
mothed out

Tree coverage in Ireland was at its lowest point a century ago. The EU has nothing to do with it. In fact, Irish tree coverage has been slowly growing since the 70s. The trees disappeared for farming, fuel and for building (including ships), centuries ago.

Reply to
Des Higgins

The countryside is created by human requirements. Factors are:

Climate change over the past few thousand years - palaeo-biology indicates how trees have come and gone.

Increased need to feed the populace - an increasing world problem Use of timber for construction and fuel - necessary for human survival

There is a mistaken belief that Britain and Ireland were coated with trees in the past. As so often, trees grow where it suits them, and where it doesn't there aren't any. Western Ireland is too wet and warm for trees to grow well. The Highlands of Scotland and the Welsh mountains were too exposed, apart from the valleys and gullies where trees were protected from harsh wind. Where there are flood plains, trees with water-resistance can survive such as willows or alders, but tend not to form large groups. In much of the English countryside, trees are found as much in hedges as in woodland.

Reply to
beccabunga

You may well be right. I'm no real expert on this. I can say that I once saw a documentary on the subject in which they interviewed a farmer, who seemed a really reasonable person with a willingness to help the environment as far as he is able. However, he explained how he had no realistic option but to fell a lot of the trees on his land because he then received better subsidies for putting the land to different use. He just couldn't afford to write off the sum he made from doing that, I couldn't have said I'd have done a differently in his shoes, which spelt death for most of the trees on his land. Another EU factor which I think may have an impact on re- forestation is the big subsidies that currently go to sheep farmers. For example, most of the hill landscapes in the british isles, in all the various countries, are completely without trees because they are given to sheep farming. As I understand, this farming would not be happening on anything like this scale without the subsidies. I have a friend with some land in Conemara, and the whole area is (in one way of looking at it) 'devastated' by sheep farming. Just by fencing off a part of his land, we soon saw how small tree saplings were taking root which would otherwise be barren, close-munched grass. Also, when you find small rocky areas where sheep can't reach on cliffs and waterfalls, you will nearly always see the native tree species such as oak trying to come though. I was pretty sad to find about ten neglected sheep (belonging to his neighbour) dying slowly and miserably on land less than a mile from their owner's house, mostly dying of parasitic infection of the liver I believe. These sheep lie incapacitated sometimes for days on the ground before dying. Someone told me the owner doesn't really care coz he only keeps the sheep for the subsidy. I don't know if that's true, but whatever, it didn't look like real farming to me. On top of this, water supplies to places like Galway have been rendered undrinkable because of washoff and general s**te from the farming, and the land owners are not fencing the animals away from the watercourses, rivers etc, which they should be doing I think, and is part of the cause of the problem. Personally I'd like to see a long term policy regarding EU subsidy which moved away from this kind of omnipresent artificially subsidised sheep industry. It doesn't make much sense...for example, in Wales I remember being able to see thousands of sheep from my windows, but would still always find New Zealand lamb in the freezers of the local chain stores (and stop to think how much energy and pollution was spent shipping that NZ lamb to the UK). In view of the environmental damage this strangely organised industry causes, surely there is some less damaging way we could subsidise rural people? While this system holds sway, i don't see how you'd get the chance to restore the kind of tree cover that existed historically in Ireland.

Reply to
mothed out

Loreena Mckennitt and some unknown 18th century songwriter pretty much say it all.

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"O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree For it stood on your shore for many's the long day Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away.

O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand And the more I think on you the more I think long If I had you now as I had once before All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore.

All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?" For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."

O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand And the more I think on you the more I think long If I had you now as I had once before All the Lords of Old England would not purchase Portmore."

ca 1745.

Reply to
J. Clarke

There are 2 issues here; one is whether or not EU subsidies are a good idea for the environment. It is complicated; there are certainly problems caused by it. Equally, much of the environmental legislation here on water quality etc. only exists or is only enforced because of the EU. However, what we were asking about was tree cover. How come, I can remember the Dublin mountains being just as treeless as they are now (maybe more so), even before Ireland joined the EU? Ireland lost its forests in the 16th and 17th centuries. Yes it is sustained partly that way because of agriculture; centuries of it. The EU is neither here nor there.

The para below is from

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"By the time of the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 AD, tree cover in Ireland was diminished to the extent that, according to estimates, woodland cover accounted for no more that 12.5%, and as low as

2%, of the land area. At the same time, both merchant and naval shipbuilding, although never practiced on the scale it was in Britain, also increased in Ireland. Timber for ships was exported to England from Waterford in 1608 AD, and the East India Company is known to have established a yard at Dundaniel in Cork some time before 1613 AD (Neeson, 1995)."

this below is from

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"Much of the area, particularly in the south, was heavily forested and had proved a boon to rebelling forces during the centuries of war, so a policy of removing the tree-cover was instigated. In fact, forestry was already well established as County Wicklow's first true industry. During the Tudor period, timber had become valuable. It was required for fuel and heat, housing and ship-building. Wood-charcoal was also the main resource used for smelting iron. The magnificent oak woods near Shillelagh, in the south of the county, were particularly well renowned and Sir Arthur Chichester in 1608 noted that the timber from these woods could '...furnish the King for his shipping and other uses for 20 years to come'. At this time Wicklow was the only remaining county in Leinster with extensive tree cover."

Reply to
Des Higgins

Here in the USA the rate of deforesting was something 17 acres a day to turn into charcoal which ran one of our iron works for one day. Don't ask for a site as it is most likely wrong.

If goggle is our friend.

or

Bill

Reply to
Bill

The Roe Valley has quite a few very nice woods, though a lot of the large commercial forests are terrible and a scar on the countryside. Farmers tended to fell trees everywhere except around their houses I think, hence certain places have many fine old trees.

Our own house was build on the site of an old farm house and there must be about sixty trees on our site, most of them near a hundred years old. Some of them, particularly the ash trees are a wonderful sight.

They were planted as a windbreak, and do that job quite well.

Jochen

Reply to
jl

On May 8, 4:14 pm, Des Higgins wrote:

Wouldn't dispute a word of it. Where from here though? Sadly, by and large, people don't plant trees unless they have a significant commercial motivation, unless they are highly idealistic and not forced to make an actual living from the land. Globally, one reason much forest is removed is because the values we may ascribe to trees, such as the pleasure of their presence, the way they help other natural diversity, and the bigger environmental benefits such as fixing carbon are losing out to more immediate and short-term commercial objectives. Various economic theorists have posited that until we can ascribe (and somehow enforce) a system whereby these other values are given a price that people have to take into account, then we cannot hope to see forests either preserved or re-grown. In other words, if we were forced to take into account the *real long term value* arising from trees, which often includes a longer term view of things like the actual monetary gain people who already sustainably use the trees (but are often politically marginalised), and also the cultural value of the forest as an environment for people , such as native Amazonians, the later-arriving (but sustainably operating) rubber tappers, the 'pygmy' people etc. Also there is the very real long-term poverty people suffer in the long term from living on degraded, eroded land etc. But the political situation prevailing often means that the people doing the felling never have to face those costs themselves. For anyone who might argue that we can't enforce such an 'airy fairy' or 'idealistic' value of trees when faced with the 'hard reality' of economic necessity, i think they should certainly take into account the fact that the impetus for much deforestation has

*nothing to do* with 'inevitable' economic forces, but with the strange and damaging effects of unfair and skewed political and social regimes which do not themselves follow any particular economic logic which took account of the long-term benefits to people living near or in the forests (the historic deforestation of Ireland being a case in point).. The artificiality of the whole system really came home to me when I decided about 15 years ago to do a bit of research into why the Amazonian forests in Brazil are disappearing so fast. One of the best books I found on the subject were some of the text books for an Open University course on environmental issues. It explained how much of the deforestation in Brazil was occurring because BIG and politically influential ranchers were seeking to maximise their (vast array of) ranch land, because they could then benefit and profit from artificial subsidies and tax breaks from the Brazilian govt. These big powerful landowners were part of a big 'farmers union' or some such, which had a lot of influence in the govt, making it difficult to change thigns. Meanwhile, vast numbers of poorly represented poor folks (often pushed off land by the powerful landownders with the guns and the money), may be pushed further into the jungle to try and cut themselves a sustainable small-holding. in due course, however, these people are pressured into losing or amalgamating their lands into the ranches, mostly being pushed further into the jungle....and so the system goes on. Similarly, people representing groups such as the rubber tappers, who exploited the trees sustainably without cutting them down, often meet a sticky end, like Chico Mendez did, assassinated for his trouble by powerful land-owning interest groups and their agents. And bear in mind that these big ranches are not necessarily economic without the subsidies, and tend to become less viable through the degradation of the land once it loses tree cover. And all this because of vested interests and how they=92ve been able to skew things through artificial agricultural subsidies and the like. Moving back to the european situation, while the worst ravaging of the trees may belong in history, surely we (EU countries) would also have to take a serious look at taking into account values *other than* immediate and obvious financial returns to get some serious reforestation happening. This would have to somehow translate into the value of new woodland actually being taken account of euros and cents, even if that means using =91artificial=92 subsidy as part of the motive. Since the use of these truly vast swathes of land for sheep seems to be sustained specifically by subsidy already, i don' think it's so outlandish to see that as a key part of where we might, collectively and with consent, change that and subsidise in a different direction. Pricing living trees artificially, but with full account of the 'non-immediate' value has got plenty of working precedents. After all, look at the way that the imposition of carbon pricing is being used to radically alter the balance sheets of businesses in a way that aims to help the environment. It's entirely based on =91artificial=92 regulation, but is nonetheless being applied to radically change 'common sense' economic and industrial activity. Interestingly, there is a serious and binding 'tree pricing' regime starting up in London right now. In London there have been a huge number of trees felled because of a big fear of subsidence caused by tree-roots on the part of house owners. An organisation has (i understand) been established to put a specific monetary price on various trees, based on their age, beauty, recreational, aesthetic etc. value. The idea is that when, say, an insurance company demands that a tree close to a property should be felled, they will actually have to justify removing the tree on a 'balance sheet' which compares the loss 'to society' (as it were) as expressed in monetary value, against the probable or real monetary cost of the damage the tree might cause. Apparently some trees have been priced around the 750 thousand pounds stirling mark, so you can see how the case for removal might lose the day (and therefore the planning go-ahead) when they are required by a pricing scheme to look at the full longterm picture...
Reply to
mothed out

The message from snipped-for-privacy@home.org (Way Back Jack) contains these words:

It depends which part of Britain you look at. Some areas are treeless (because of climate, latitude, agriculture, or intensive sheep/deer grazing) Other areas are densely forested with ancient woodlands or modern forestry.

Quote " Forestry Statistics 2007 - Woodland Areas and Planting

The 2.8 million hectares of woodland in the UK represents 11.7% of the total land area; this percentage ranges from 6.4% in Northern Ireland to

17.2% in Scotland." end quote

much more at

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Janet.

Reply to
Janet Baraclough

The name of the game is "privatize the profits, and socialize the cost". Business gets the profits and the tax payers pick up the tab for remediation. The first step is education, because as long as our life style looks cheap, it will be very expensive to repair the accumulative damage. Indeed, it may already be too late.

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Reply to
Billy

I is said that when the Europeans arrived to North America, a squirrel could have gone from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River, without putting a foot on the ground.

Reply to
Billy

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