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Does anyone have more information? I lived in Galway for several years and it sounds interesting. > recover land previously used for growing and harvesting non

• rsynnott 12y ago
  Coillte, the state forest management company, discontinued some less critical operations during the economic crisis. Looking at their website, this was never a particularly large-scale operation.
• CalRobert 12y ago
  It's refreshing to go to the few forested areas and see what almost all of the island looked like a thousand years ago. There's some beautiful places in the Bearagh peninsula. That being said, some of the planted forests are pretty obvious. I still like the trees, but it's definitely a different feel.
  • talideon 12y ago
    It takes time for that to recover. Initial plantations are always obvious, but that'll change over time.
• soneil 12y ago
  I'm not sure how to parse that sentence (and I know it's not yours, no worries). I read it as .. Apple will a) recover land previously used for, and b) restore native trees?
  • jkot 12y ago
    Ireland has maybe 1% of land covered by trees. Choping down forest near major city to build datacenter is just bad. There are many free pastures.
    • teh_klev 12y ago
      Unless of course the forest is non-native tax-haven pine, the kind of stuff planted in the 70's to allow rock stars, actors and comedians to avoid paying tax. These types of forests generally aren't native and are they're not particularly great at supporting a diverse range of flora and fauna. Re-planting with native deciduous species is a much better thing in the long run environmentally speaking.
    • Someone 12y ago
      Ireland doesn't that many forests, but it is more like 10% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_are..., http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-forest-area-577152-Aug2012/ http://www.thejournal.ie/ireland-forest-area-577152-Aug2012/). That percentage is going up (http://www.foresteurope.org/documentos/State_of_Europes_Forests_2011_Report_Revised_November_2011.pdf http://www.foresteurope.org/documentos/State_of_Europes_Fore..., figure 5 on page 21; nice map of Europe on page 6, by the way)
• talideon 12y ago
  What?! That's a good thing! Are you sure you read that right? Frankly, we need more native tree cover, and that's what they're planning on doing, and getting rid of those damned ugly conifers that are only good for wood harvesting. Personally, I'd like to see more marginal land being returned into proper deciduous forests. The problem is that people have difficulty getting to the idea that more forest cover would actually be beneficial to the unforested land as it would protect it from the wind, thus preventing soil erosion, which is an issue, especially in the west and northwest. I'd a discussion about this in a pub over Christmas, and the arguments against boiled down to people not wanting to lose grazing land for sheep, which is reasonable enough, and that forest can be breeding grounds for midges, which is less reasonable.
  • secfirstmd 12y ago
    Yeh but in my experience in Ireland, the midges are mainly a problem in the non-native and fast growing species found in the "managed" Coillte forrests.