Yes, it's not just a matter of planting trees any old where. We need more official and private forestry, for good economic and social, reasons, but first we have to think of people. And the IFA in the Melleray area of Waterford, the Farmers Journal reported, held a meeting to discuss all this. Fighting their own corner, too, of course.
One of the main points to emerge was that some form of land use agency, on the lines of the old Land Commission, should be set up to arbitrate at local level between the sometimes competing needs of farming, forestry and tourism, for example. Further, the farmers argued that Coillte - the State agency for forestry - should not be eligible to claim the forestry premium. If this were removed, it would help "to cool the land market somewhat."
They are not all against Coillte, agreeing that body has been prepared to sell back the odd good field to a farmer or to swap good grazing land for a larger parcel of poorer land. They also want a mandatory notice to be displayed for at least three months on land where there is to be a permanent change of land use e.g., for commercial forestry. They say, too, that the tax exempt status of forestry gives an unfair advantage in competing with other farm enterprise.
And there is the more personal and neighbourly aspect of all this. Individual houses or groups of houses which were built largely for the sake of the view of seaside or mountain, should not lose those advantages through ill placed forestry. And to find, suddenly, that your house or farm is to be enveloped on two sides, even, by massed conifers can be looked on as an infringement of your rights, you might think. And on three sides, a daftness. But the Forest Service, apparently, can make it a condition of grant aid, in such cases, that trees are kept back more than the minimum of 30 metres.
But don't let growing pains take away from the fact that forestry is a major factor in our economy and in enhancing our lives in other ways. That it has taken generations of devoted work to get the public interested at all. That last year, private planting, repeat, private planting reached 40,000 acres. Growing pains. But some sense of the look of the forest must always be taken into account.
In Germany, a former resident recalled, her house was faced with a dark, foreboding wall of trees on the mountains opposite. But, and it is a big but, here and there among the conifers were planted large blocks of oaks and beech and birch, which in spring and summer eased the gloom of the conifers, but in autumn glowed and blazed with the red and gold, and, into winter, held the light brown of the beech. Looks do matter, in forestry too.