Sir, – After a very successful distribution of 3,000 saplings, supplied by Coillte last National Tree Week for volunteer planting, I thought to replicate it for every county this year. That would be a total of 78,000 native trees for the 26 counties. I had naively assumed that our semi-State for forestry would be able to supply me. I put in the request and went about getting volunteers around the country to do exactly what I did last time. Within two days I had eight counties covered which would be 24,000 trees.
I had no doubt I could get every county involved. There is a huge appetite for planting native. Coillte got back to me to say they could not even guarantee the 3,000 number of last year. If you go into our site 80max.ie/trees you can see on the map where we supplied trees for last year’s tree week. Only nine were reported as not surviving. With ash die back, chestnut disease and loss of elm surely Coillte needs to be upping their game in getting native species into the ground.
I would like to know what the problem is in Coillte or is it Government? – Is mise le meas,
JANE JACKSON,
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Greystones, Co Wicklow.