A tree grows in Wicklow

MILLENNIUM TREES: Were the stars directing our forests' fate? Or was it just another mismanaged fiasco? Catherine Cleary(pictured) went deep into Ballygannon Wood in Wicklow to see if her Millennium oak is still a-growing

IT WAS BURIED in a forgotten folder, a small oddly-shaped piece of paper with a green leaf border and a printed red wax stamp on it. My millennium tree certificate was like a waft of old perfume. Those were the heady days when the Government had money to give us candles and trees and throw a party. The People’s Millennium Forests project promised a tree for every household, a native Irish sapling planted in my name, in one of 16 forests in Ireland.

Back in 1999 my household consisted of me. A decade on it has matured and sprouted several branches. Now we are five. So how has “our tree” fared? Can I visit it, as the politicians promised? And what is the legacy of this ambitious project?

It is a Monday morning in Ballygannon Wood just outside Rathdrum in Co Wicklow and the rain is pelting my umbrella so hard that a torrent is running down my back. Coillte forest manager Con Nyhan is pointing out a healthy young oak tree growing near a towering 350- year–old specimen. His response to the question “So is this my tree?” is to grin patiently and agree, like a parent agreeing to a demanding child, “Yes. You can call that your tree.”

A map at the entrance shows that the long serial number printed on my certificate represents a tree somewhere in this part of the forest. Up a path slick with tobacco-brown oak leaves we find the millennium trees. This particular oak is taller than me, stretching up nearly three metres. It is not big enough to lean on yet. The trunk is thinner than my wrist, but it is there – and it is growing.

The reason for the patient grin that greets the “where’s my tree?” question goes back to meetings more than a decade ago, when political promises met the possible reality of managing a living forest. The Government and its ambitious Millennium Committee, headed up by the late Séamus Brennan, wanted the “one for everyone in the audience” approach of a tree for each household. The ambitious pledge conjured up images of future generations wandering mature forests thanking us millennium elders for the gift of dappled shade. We were encouraged to imagine these future trees like church pews, each one a brass plate commemoration of the households of 1999.

Ecologist Dr Declan Little, who was the project manager for the plan, remembers trying to explain to Brennan and his officials that it was a virtually impossible promise.

Little was part of the Woodlands of Ireland group set up in 1998 to come up with a plan to restore native Irish woods which “had been in an awful state for more than a century”. They set about securing sponsorship of €6.3 million from AIB, the Forest Service, and the Millennium Committee, and had many meetings to work out the details of the ambitious scheme.

The ecologist remembers explaining how tricky it would be to make promises about individual trees. Giving every household a recorded location in an existing forest was virtually impossible. There was no way in 40 or 50 years that all those trees would survive unless the landbank was vastly increased to give them the space to grow to maturity, he explained.

There was talk of tagging every sapling with a name or a number. “The logistics of that were mind-boggling,” Little says. Then there were the legal difficulties over the ownership of a tree given to someone but planted on land owned by Coillte. But the public imagination was captured by the idea and the politicians loved it. This was no fireworks and champagne celebration, they told us. It was a grand and elegant plan.

The vast undertaking began. Saplings were grown quickly from seed in polytunnels and the year after certificates had dropped through letterboxes, the young trees were planted in Coillte forests around the country. Over the years, Little has had to explain to people that they cannot bury the ashes of a loved one under their Millennium tree. Their sapling is now part of a forest, rather than an individual tree in an accessible site for them to wander up to and throw a possessive arm around.

Some of the forests fared better than others. An unusually aggressive Wicklow rabbit population did for saplings in Shelton forest and these had to be replaced. At Derrygill, near Woodford, in Galway, the trees struggled to establish themselves in unsuitable soil conditions.

But, despite the problems and the criticisms of the scheme, Little believes it has been a success. He estimates that more than a million millennium native trees are still growing out there, with relatively little attrition. Since 2001, a further €20 million has been spent on regenerating native woodlands and the big step taken to celebrate the millennium was the catalyst for that investment.

Back on the ground in Ballygannon, forest manager Con Nyhan explains the trees and their terrain. “There’s nothing black and white when it comes to growing something.” Underfoot, the ground is covered in glossy green growth, the leaves of the blanket of bluebells which bloom in May. The ground is hummocky and pitted with boot-sized holes perfect for spraining an ankle.

Visitors to the woods have criticized the briars that grow around the saplings making it difficult to walk among the trees, Nyhan says. Yet this wild growth protects the young trees from browsing deer that leap the three-metre perimeter fence and wreck the plantation.

And what about the criticism that mature native trees were clear-felled (or bulldozed) to make way for the saplings? “That was put about, but in actual fact we removed the conifers,” Nyhan explains. “When we removed the conifers some of the oak got blown down, so people thought we were removing the oak.”

The conifers, which matured in 50 years, characterised planting in Irish forests for generations after independence. The result was dense dark forests with dry, dead floors, where plants could not grow. A native forest is a bright, green space, and Ballygannon in May, Nyhan assures me, is a blanket of bluebells.

“For the next millennium, whoever’s around, this is going to be a fantastic place to live or to walk in. I think it’s going to be a seismic situation because people will appreciate what we’ve got. Today, in the financial climate we’ve got, we certainly wouldn’t get the money to do it.”

Does he get many inquiries about the millennium trees? “I get maybe three to four in a year.” Have people forgotten? “Not really. I think they have accepted. The city people sometimes, and people in towns, would say: ‘I’d like to drive out and I’d like to find my tree’. I would say, ‘I’ll meet you on the ground and show you a plot and your tree is in that plot’. ”

After 40 years as a forester, he knows the potential of the planting done in 2001. For his 21st birthday, he brought saplings down to his native west Cork and planted them on the family land. Now, aged 61, he can see his plantation on Google maps, mature timber growing on the land. He would dearly love, he says, to see Ballygannon and the other woods in 50 years.

Whenever he travels to drier countries he is impressed again by how quickly trees grow in our damp climate. “Our growth potential here for hardwoods or conifers is so vast, our politicians will have to put more resources into creating employment in the likes of forestry. There is a huge amount of work that could still be done. When money becomes available, one of the key areas for investment is forestry. There’s over a million acres still suitable for planting for trees in this country – one million – and the potential downstream is immense.”

On the Coillte website the message is that the tree planting is a 100-year project. “The new forests are fully stocked and are growing vigorously. As the woodlands grow, natural thinning will continuously take place. This will mean only a small proportion of the original saplings planted will reach maturity.”

That final number has been estimated at as few as one in 10 of the saplings. But as we are leaving Ballygannon, Nyhan moves some dead leaves with his foot and points out a tiny, yellow sapling, with a lone leaf, pushing upwards. With clearer ground below them, the mature oaks have started seeding themselves. The moss-covered elders have dropped acorns and these have taken root. The Millennium saplings have been joined by other smaller, wild saplings. They are real green shoots as opposed to the ones to which economists refer. So while “my tree” may not survive, a woodland has been created.

“To me this is a legacy,” Nyhan says. “You had Avondale set up in 1904, and now this in 2000. It’s only in years to come that it’s going to be appreciated.”

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