Sir, - May I join Philip Gormley (October 5th) in endorsing Lorna Siggins's tribute to Joss Lynam? Not only has he pioneered Irish mountaineering, he has also worked tirelessly and generously to protect Ireland's historical, architectural and natural environment, advising on strategies to preserve and enhance our threatened heritage.
Appropriately, Mr Gormley alerts us to the depredation being caused by the ubiquitous planting here of polluting conifers. This is accompanied by drainage of wetlands and the invasive destruction of native deciduous species and dependent flora and fauna. I suggest that concerned readers write, as I have done, to Coillte, asking for its response, if any, to the UK Forestry Commission's recently announced conifer removal initiative.
The commission has embarked on a massive and costly programme of uprooting these destructive, ugly weeds from vast areas of the British countryside in what has been described as an extraordinary act of restitution. Commercial conifers are being uprooted from 4,000 acres of woodland by Loch Lomond and deciduous trees being planted instead. Some 20,000 half-grown Corsican pines are being removed from the Lake District. In the Kielder Forest, trees are being removed from nearly 2,000 acres of bogland and the damage caused by forestry-related drainage hopefully reversed by blocking these drains. Similar programmes exist for East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Dorset as well as near my former home in England, the Peak District.
Meanwhile I watch the county of my birth, Wicklow, and vast tracts of the rest of Ireland succumb to the designer stubble of spruce trees and become impossible for walkers as well as wildlife. When, if at all, will we ever learn that good environmental practice also makes economic sense? - Yours, etc., Prof Mary C. King,
Ballyduff, Co Wicklow.