A leading forester has called for Northern Ireland's Forest Service to be reviewed, as a matter of priority.

Premier Woodlands managing director, John Hetherington stated:

“Forest Service is an agency within the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs, or DAERA. It has held this status for approximately two decades.

"It is appropriate for the structures and operational priorities of Forest Service to be reassessed and sufficient investment and resources put into the Forest Service, to manage this expanded workload," he added.

“And this work must be undertaken in the very near future."

Hetherington confirmed that Minister Poots has recently committed to developing a new woodland creation target for Northern Ireland, which will see 2,000ha of land planted out in trees on an annual basis.

“But we have to assess the likelihood of this happening against the performance levels currently being achieved by Forest Service.”

According to the Premier Woodlands representative, the area covered by Northern Ireland's Forestry Expansion Scheme (FES) and the Small Woodland Grant Scheme (SWGS) for the 2021/22 tree planting season will again total approximately 200-300ha.

“But this figure doesn’t tell the whole story,” Hetherington stressed.

“A number of 2020 SWGS applications did not receive the green light from Forest Service in time for that year's planting season, which meant that those areas in question had to be resubmitted for consideration this year.

“So the fundamental question has to be asked - if Forest Service cannot cope with 200-300ha of tree planting per year, how will the same organisation be in a position to deal with 2,000ha of planting on an annual basis?”

Hetherington acknowledged that Covid-19 restrictions have had some impact on the operational capacity of Forest Service over the past two years.

However, he feels that these have not been of a sufficient scale to account for what he said is the inability of the organisation to meet the fundamental needs of the private forestry sector.

“A fundamental review of Forest Service must be undertaken," he urged.

According to Hetherington, guidelines determining where trees can and cannot be planted, and how these guidelines are interpreted by Forest Service personnel must be made much clearer and be consistent.

This includes the issue of what constitutes a priority habitat.

“Priority habitats are areas of species-rich grassland and peat etc., plus buffer zones must be excluded from all planting areas," he said.

“Where actual planting operations are concerned at the present time, there is a critical shortfall in the availability of the young trees that have been specified for most sites," he continued.

He explained that this is largely due to late planting approval dates and tree nurseries already having sold their tree stock.

“Adding to the issue of nurseries having sold their stock, is the fact that forestry development companies cannot import sufficient numbers of specific trees, grown from UK seed, they need from Great Britain," Hetherington said.

"And if they are not changed, the likelihood of current planting rates being retained is remote, never mind meeting the targets put forward by Minister Poots to rapidly escalate our woodland and forestry cover.”