The farm forestry chair of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) has described the Project Woodland review report, published this week, as lacking in vision.
Jason Fleming said he is concerned by the lack of vision in the report to create a workable licensing system for forestry at farm scale.
And he specifically expressed his disappointment at the report’s recommendation to maintain the licence requirement for thinning operations.
The independent Project Woodland: Regulatory Review Report looked into the forestry regulatory system in Ireland, and explored whether improvements could be made to the licensing system, while working within the parameters of Irish and EU environmental law.
It made a number of recommendations such as: Imposing time limits on the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) for different stages in a decision-making procedure; providing a ‘fast-track’ procedure for certain categories of emergency or low-risk applications; considering the adoption of procedures to ensure that forest-road applications are considered in combination/parallel with any associated application for an afforestation, felling or thinning licence; among others.
Disappointment
But the IFA forestry chair said it is hard to see, from the recommendations put forward, whether farmer confidence in forestry as a viable land use will be restored.
“I am particularly disappointed with the recommendation to maintain the licence requirement for thinning operations, despite multiple examples being provided in the report that this is not the case in other European countries,” he added.
He said such reform would have significantly reduced the pressure on the system and allowed farmers to manage their forests according to a forest-management plan and the principles of sustainable forest management.
“The report does recommend that procedures are introduced to ensure that forest road applications are considered in parallel with any associated applications for afforestation or thinning licence,” he said.
And he said this is important as there are many forest owners that have received felling-licence approval but are still waiting on forest-road approval, which is causing huge frustration and delays realising the value of their investment.
“To be honest there was nothing substantive in the report to address farmers’ concerns regarding forestry or that would reform the regulatory system to support planting at the scale required to meet the Climate Action Plan 2021 targets,” he said.
“If anything, the concern would be that some recommendations would further limit and restrict the planting and management of forests in Ireland.”