Optimising for car parking?

Everyone could use with getting out more into the amazing landscapes that surround the Dublin. From Howth to the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains there are loads of really spectacular places to immerse yourself in nature. Whenever someone says they are visiting Dublin - first piece of advice? Get out of Dublin! At least go and see some of Wicklow.

One of the nearest places that people can go is the Hellfire Club and Massey’s forest estate, split by the road that runs between them up the mountain side and into the Featherbeds.

We want to share some insight into the plans to develop a substantial visitor centre in the area. We are hopeful that the development will encourage many more people to understand the true value of native forestry. This is one of the very few places that you can experience both commercial forestry and biodiversity rich native, long established woodlands in such close proximity to each other.

Following the ancient wisdom of ‘reading the docs’.. or RTFM if you prefer, we learned a lot about the proposed plans to somehow wedge a visitors centre, car park and sky walk in between the trees. The machinations of the planning process behind the project yields a whole load of insights into natures rights during this Anthropocene induced biodiversity crisis.

There is a kind of dichotomy between peoples need to experience nature and natures capacity to accommodate it where planning applications are wielded. Sometimes people can be fooled into thinking that plastic nature like commercial forests are somehow a worthy habitat - and that is a danger here.

Visitors may not even realise that the majority of high forests are merely commercial forests that not only fail to support any biodiversity but are actively hostile to it. Here in lies the danger of this project being used as a laundromat for the reputation of commercial forestry, especially the national forestry company. Many thousands of hectares will remain completely devoid of any nature sustaining, biodiversity rich habitats like the proposed native forests here will provide.

The area provides a great opportunity for people to see and feel the difference between plantation forest and native woodlands. Actually not just native but real, almost ancient woodlands that are found in the valley across the road from where the visitor centre is being plonked down.

Leaving aside the plans for such a large visitors centre and the accompanying parking area, we have to commend the plans to remove the non native, commercial varieties of trees and replace them with a wide variety of native trees under a continuous cover forestry schema. The question is why aren’t all commercial forests designated to be upgraded in this way.

What has been a surprise in reading through all of these documents is the scant acknowledgement of the extremely valuable and rare (nearly) ancient woodlands in Massey’s forest. Hopefully we will see these areas better highlighted in the visitor centre and accompanying educational resources.

Only very small and isolated patches of ancient or extremely long established woodland continue to survive throughout Ireland, these are unique habitats that should all be afforded much greater protection. We must do everything that we can to conserve them and keep them in the best condition possible. The habitat value of the woodlands present here since 1830’s don’t seem to be sufficiently highlighted as a consideration in the correspondence between planning authorities and any of the other parties involved- should we be concerned?

Massy’s Wood like much of the rest of Irelands remaining native woodlands do suffer from colonisation by alien invasive species such as rhododendrons and cherry laurel - these will be managed as part of any continuous cover forestry plan, which is great news.

The ‘harvest plan’ for Massy covers the top of the area hatched green in the image below including the encircled area that is a beautiful, mature native woodland populated with many really majestic beech and grand oak trees. Fortunately they will all be spared.

The only species to be felled under licence in this neck of the woods will be sitka spruce, Norway spruce, noble fir (ie Christmas trees), western hemlock, Japanese larch and lawson cypress. They will be replaced mainly with birch, Scots pine, rowan, oak and open spaces. All the non native and commercial species of trees will be gone.

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Going over to the other side of the road (top left quarter of the image above) where the majority of the planning applications pertaining to the development of the proposed visitor centre are filed, there are clear fell licences but they specifically leave native broadleaves out of their harvesting plans. Birch, oak and beech trees will all remain standing. These represent only a very small portion of the canopy here and there will still be horrendous disruption to any natural value left behind while the process of felling and construction takes place.

As a consequence of the more natural varieties of trees that survive here being surrounded by coniferous forest as they grew up their limbs are stretched meaning they are weak and quite susceptible to being wind blown, so it remains to be seen how many will actually make it through to maturity.

Reforestation will variously take place across the different plots here with Scots pine, birch, oak and other native broadleaf species.

Like much of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains both sides of the road here are property of the state forestry company. The Hellfire Club and Massy’s Wood are outlined in the top left - together covering Specialists in planting huge swaths of upland areas with industrial grade, non-native varieties of trees that leech into the surrounding landscape and cause a myriad of problems. Most of the timber produced is of such low quality that its only use is in making fence posts or wood pallets. It’s barely fit for making toothpicks- yet we pay so dearly for it. Just go to Wicklow Harbour and you can see the amount of timber imported into the country.

There is allegedly even more carbon produced than is sequestered by this industry when you factor in transport and the fact that afforestation often takes place on peaty soils that are drained for planting. Carbon sequestration from commercial forests is a dangerous fallacy. We can’t afford to be complacent.

One of the interesting tidbits from the correspondence published is how an archeological survey would not be necessary because of how the land was afforested in the first place. The violence with which the ground is prepared in places like this merely for the harvesting of toothpicks means that the only archeological relic left was a standing stone.

The great hope for this place is that it serves as a basis for converting more commercial forests over to biodiversity rich continuous cover forestry that supports native species of trees and wildlife.

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RTFM: select layers > Coillte clearfell > Licence ID DU02-FL0175 etc

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