A protest is planned outside Coillte headquarters in Co. Wicklow later this week, over plans by the company for a deal with a UK investment fund, Gresham House.
London headquartered Gresham House, which also has Irish operations, will team up with the state forestry company Coillte to roll out the new ‘Irish Strategic Investment Fund’.
The UK asset management company said that the fund will “acquire existing forest assets and when fully deployed, will represent a portfolio of approximately 12,000ha of new and existing forests” in Ireland.
Protest
The Rural Ireland Organisation (RIO) has decided to protest along with others at Coillte HQ on Friday, February 24.
Leader of RIO, Gerry Loftus has claimed that “Collite is a completely unaccountable maverick organisation. Coillte forests are unmanaged, un-thinned, and unfenced”.
“Farm animals that enter unfenced forests [could] end up being caught in fallen down barbed wire, briars and bushes and very often suffer a slow agonising death as farmers can’t access these poorly maintained forests,” Loftus claimed
“In addition to this, sitka spruce forests are a serious water pollutant releasing acidic needles into waterways.
“These forests are overpopulated with deer, grazing on farmers’ land, destroying fences and carrying TB resulting in devastating losses to farmers,” he added.
The RIO representative said that many forests are cut down in all types of weather, resulting in silt and mud in local rivers, and criticised what he described as the inadequate response from the government.
Coillte deal with Gresham House
Loftus said that the Coillte deal with Gresham House will never be accepted a “done deal”.
“We are calling on farmers under no circumstances to sell land if you don’t know the buyer, and to ensure that they are not buying for a vulture fund,” he continued.
“We are advocating a policy of non-cooperation with the government’s Climate [Action] Plan. Until we’ve had proper consultation on all the issues facing our communities, farmers need to stall any climate actions on their farms.
“No planting of trees, no rewetting of peatlands, no reducing cow numbers and no reduction of sheep on hills until the people of rural Ireland are consulted on what they want in their communities.”
RIO is also calling for the immediate banning of the planting of sitka spruce.
Forestry and rewetting
The results of research commissioned by the government and researched by the Atlantic Technological University (ATU) in Galway states that to reach climate targets by 2050, Ireland needs to plant 875,000ha of forestry and rewet 90% of reclaimed farmland.
Loftus stated: “Can we imagine what the west of Ireland would look like with just over two million acres in forestry? Parishes, schools, communities, Ppople and villages gone.”
RIO said it has joined forces with 40 groups and organisations such as People Before Profit and The Woodland League to fight corporate forestry programmes resulting in the formation of the ‘Save Our Forests – Save Our Land Alliance’.
The organisation will stage a protest outside Coillte head office in Wicklow on Friday, February 24 at 2:00p.m.