MODERN IRELAND HAS never had an easy relationship with trees. Storm Éowyn, which blasted into Ireland in January with record breaking wind speeds up to 184km/hr has made matters worse.

Trees were largely held responsible for the downing of power lines, leaving thousands of people without electricity or water for weeks. The toll on commercial forestry was just as bad, with the Department of Agriculture estimating that 30,000 hectares of plantation have been destroyed, valued at €500 million. Politicians were heard in the days after the storm saying that trees near roads or power lines should be torn down to ensure impacts on this scale are not repeated.

However, all trees are not equal and a closer inspection would reveal that not all trees were responsible for the damage. Fast growing and non-native conifers, whether planted close to homes to act as shelter belts or in vast monocultures for commercial production, have broad and shallow root plates compared to native or broad-leaved species.

Sitka spruce is particularly vulnerable to ‘wind throw’ (the forestry term for when trees are knocked over in storms) and the glut of knocked over trees is a double disaster for those who lost their forests as the price of timber going to sawmills will now be depressed.

Plantations of monoculture conifers, which are grown to be clear-felled, have long been despised by environmentalists and the many communities who have to live with them. However, they can hardly be viewed more favourably by economic investors as the forestry model is vulnerable to not only extreme weather events but pests and the longer-term implications of climate change. No private investor would put their........

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