Thursday, 15 November 2012
Sunday, 11 November 2012
Trees.
Tara Beech
Listening And Wondering?
Just now
I am listening to Drivetime; RTE Radio 1. Its mid July 2014 and we are in the middle
of a heatwave. They are talking about heat, drought and how cattle
make for the cool shelter of the hedges as the day heats up. Poetic stuff, RTE
stuff, for city people maybe... but what possible shade and shelter
from the sun can animals find now in our hedges, sheared and stumped as they
are by our governments misnamed environmental schemes. How can such hedges provide
shade or shelter or safety for anything now; either birds, wildlife or cattle.
How can they hold water at their roots and base, as they always did, thus ensuring
against drought, how can they provide shade for anything, even humans as they did
for centuries when allowed grow and billow out naturally? Is it not time to
beak another taboo and expose this hedge cutting/hedge destruction as
environmental madness?
Clauses.
Listen in as our politicians, waffle on about how Ireland has the best
environmental safeguards in Europe, how they have people on the ground, how so
much is protected etc. Listen in often as they quote the restraints included in
both our Wildlife and Forestry Acts, the two primary pieces of legalisation we
have for environmental protection. These acts do have a lot about what you
cannot do; but seldom do you hear about the opt out clauses, the pieces of
writings on what you can do! These "opt outs", are tiny and written in
legal speak and are inserted into these acts for the sake of farming and business.
They allow just about anything be done, if done “under the normal course of
farming, forestry, road building or under health and safety needs”. Such
clauses are small, hard to find and often difficult to understand, yet they are
so broad in practice that they have the effect of making all the other stuff
about restraint, care and safeguard, null and void. This means that in reality
there is little if any protection for natural wild growth, habitat or the
things that needs this. So we ae really allowed to cut, remove and flail with
glee!
Consider
these: A huge oak tree, 300 years old, healthy, disease free and standing 30
meters from a building is protected under the 1946 Forestry Act and must have a
protection order placed on it, while a person who wishes to fell it, seeks and
obtains a felling licence. Or it can be felled under the normal course of
farming, without question. It can also be felled if the remains of a hut is nearer
it than 30 meters to it, as such are in most cities and towns. It can also be
deemed unsafe and felled at will. That huge Oak tree in reality is at the mercy
of anyone’, thats our law.
FSC. A
wood, billowing out green and full of both nesting birds and protected wildlife
in reproduction times is covered and protected by our Wildlife Act 2001. It is
protected to a degree that should make us proud; but it too can be felled if
done under the normal course of forestry. Nothing can be done about that.
Coillte for instance did just that at Lismullen in 2011. They also use the FSC
certificate when selling the wood, a certificate that proves the wood was
felled and harvested in an environmental way.
Hedges.
Hedges; old, healthy and the repository of much of our flora and fauna are habitats
of immense value. They are a means of soil and water retention, they provide shade
and shelter, food supply, nesting and resting places and they give our land the
green look it is re-known for. They too are protected under both acts but these
too can be removed under the normal course of farming or under health and
safety laws. Indeed a whole landscape of these can now be removed totally,
incrementally and yearly, if done under the New Farm Measures introduced by Irish
Government Ministers Simon Coveney and Phil
Hogan in 2011. This is considered now as a normal course of farming!
An
avenue of great Beech Trees can be protected and cherished by everyone, but
they can be removed too by a developer who buys the property they stand on, if
he can find someone who determines that the trees are diseased. That person
needs no qualification other than to term themselves an Aborist. He needs prove
“diseased” to no one. A training and degree in Arboriculture does not exist in
Ireland and it seems it never will. Such a study might hinder all of the above
from happening. This happened all through the Celtic Tiger everywhere.
Tree
protection orders can be placed on trees of importance and they sometimes are
but again many of these trees are subject to the above clauses and can be
removed as fast as the protection orders can be removed, if deemed unsafe etc.
The National Botanic Gardens have been doing this regularly.
The
Emerald Isle; that’s us!
Friday, 9 November 2012
Ash Die Back.
Ash Dieback has been in Europe since before 2002. Most tree
people knew and that it would spread too; fungal diseases do that. They
expected though, that European governments would treat such an environmental threat
with urgency. The reverse happened and so the disease has spread. Recently the
UK authorities have held a series of crises meetings and belatedly promised to
do all possible to halt or slow it. Tony Kirkham, of Kew Gardens, has said that
a complete ban was needed on imports of any plants that threatened a species,
and a one-year quarantine was needed for all plants coming into Britain. Prof
Clive Brasier, a UK plant pathologist specializing in tree diseases says the
problem is “trade at any cost” and pointing to the dramatic increase in
damaging plant pathogen, he said that the UK is now in danger of losing much of
its historic tree and forest heritage because “the European plant security
“door” is quite simply off its hinges”.
EU leaders though have remained as quite as mice about it all.
EU leaders though have remained as quite as mice about it all.
Despite what is happening borders remain open, free trade
and free movement continues and the future of our ecology is imperiled as never
before.
Imagine if the UK does manage to hold Charala Fraxenia at
bay but are then faced with its spread from Southern Ireland, how do we answer
that? In reality we are recklessly endangering our land and in the borderless
world we live in, the lands of others too. The misnamed Reps scheme is a good
example; it is a scheme in which our government pays farmers to mow their hedges
down. They are doing this even now, despite the disease, and this is leaving
row after row of broken mangled stumps where our old hedges used to be. Ash is
a common plant in our hedgerows and Charala fraxenia has been found in Ireland,
but in these flailed and mangled hedges it cannot be seen or noticed. The open
wounds make ideal entry points for fungal spores and if a flail goes through
one infected plant then it can spread the disease as it goes along. Under these
conditions the spread becomes inevitable. Our government has also decided to
import Ash timber regardless.
Ash were the Bile trees of antiquity, they fill our myths,
they were held sacred once and the Fir Bile was an old name given to us. They
make up about a third of our trees. Their loss will cause environmental damage
on a scale never before see. It will affect habitat, bird populations, water
retention and the look and feel of our land for decades to come. Defoliation
causes climate change and will even affect our ability to breathe, yet in
comparison to England we are almost silent about it, we remain ignorant and
almost indifferent to the growing list of destructive pathogens coming into
Europe, and into our land too; eventually. The model we follow is wrong and we
have to change!
All hedge cutting must stop, all trade and movement must be
controlled and our environment must be placed in the position of priority it
deserves. Essentially we have to place the health and future of our land above
the EU’s, mad open bordered dogma!
It is wrong to behave as though we do not need nature, it is
wrong to hand our children a nightmare, it is wrong to allow the profits of a
few to endanger all. Our politician have been informed about this, they all know;
but they do little or nothing!
For decades Irish people have been kept in the dark about
the dangers of environmental destruction, most have chosen ignorance and have elected
politicians who promoted ignorance; and now these dangers, so long warned about
and ignored, are here.
Please copy this, email it and post it on.
Photos: Ill Ash Trees In County Meath. October. 2012.
Photos: Ill Ash Trees In County Meath. October. 2012.
Wednesday, 7 November 2012
Free Ash Trade
Free Ash Trade.
The Irish Forestry Services:
have three press releases on view on their site regarding
Ash Die Back.
One was released on the 07 November 2012. http://www.agriculture.gov.ie/press/pressreleases/2012/november/title,67442,en.html
Another one on the 02 November 2012.
And another one on the 26th of October 2012. http://www.agriculture.gov.ie/press/pressreleases/2012/october/title,67308,en.html
Read them. They are written in the language of free trade
and they use words like
“to minimize, to help reduce risk, a proportionate response”
etc.
In these press releases Minister of State with
responsibility for forestry, at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the
Marine, Shane McEntee TD clearly states that
“The scientific advice is that the movement of ash timber is
a possible pathway of infection” and “While I understand plants are the highest
risk in terms of a pathway for the disease, wood is also a risk etc, etc.
Yet he does not ban the importation of Ash wood or even
consider it; even as a temporary measure.
He is quite prepared to run the risk of the appalling spread of this disease
for the benefit of the tiny few who gain from such a trade in timber.
Here again is the good of the few being placed above the
good of the many, here is an elected politician endangering the common good,
that he was elected and promised to protect.
There are also no photos, no advice no information on this
disease on this site despite claims to the contrary. Unlike in England, where
it has been declared a national emergency it seem not to matter one whit here.
Monday, 5 November 2012
O'Connell Street Trees.
When Dublin City Council removed the wonderful Plane Trees, while renovating the street 10 years ago, they promised everyone that the trees would be replaced and replanted. This was the promise they gave. Now most of the trees that they planted then have either been removed or had died. This happens in silence. Across at College Green they have removed trees to facilitate gas pipe laying, trees are being removed to facilitate the new Luas line and, and, and. New plantings will not work so these trees will not be replaced.
How Did It Happen
How did it happen. Ask how this damaging diseases spread through
Europe might have been curtailed and you’ll open up a can of worms that raises
troubling questions about the nature of free trade and its potentially
devastating consequences for national plant biosecurity. Prof Clive Brasier,
the highly regarded British plant pathologist specialising in tree diseases,
neatly summed up the dilemma by describing it as trade at any cost, arguing
that the UK’s independent plant health controls have been sacrificed in the
interests of EU membership. Pointing to the dramatic increases in the frequency
of damaging plant pathogen importations over the past decade, he suggested that
the UK is now in danger of losing much of its historic tree and forest
heritage. His blunt conclusion was that the European plant security “door” is,
quite simply, off its hinges.
Fionnuala Fallon Irish Times. Saturday, October 13, 2012.
Friday, 2 November 2012
Hedge Destruction.
If we were to take all our hedges and pull them together, they would make up our largest broad leaf forest, taking up as much room in our land perhaps as the Rain Forests do in other lands. We show concern at the destruction of them, yet we allow our government finance farmers to remove our hedges or reduce them to stumps, thus removing habitat, food supply, resting places, carbon sequestration and seasonal beauty too, if anyone bothered to notice. We are faced with looming climate chaos, the need to re-afforest our earth is paramount, yet in Ireland we do the opposite; we defoliate recklessly and needlessly, removing the green places we and other things so desperately need.
Is there an answer why?
How they should be!
How they should be!
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