Forestry Now

Dermot McNally 0:02
welcome to forestry now, where we explore the forces impacting profitable and sustainable management of commercial forests and natural woodlands. I'm Dermot McNally. This conversation, I speak with Ray ofolu. Ray is Development Lead at hometree, a nature restoration charity with a strong focus on woodlands based in County Clare. We discussed the organization's role in landscape level projects such as the wild Atlantic Rainforest project and the ivera woodland EIP in Kerry Ray discusses bureaucratic challenges in the Irish forestry sector and the need for support of agricultural policies that empower farmers while also facilitating nature restoration. Ray sets out a clear vision of how we can create vibrant rural communities that value both food production and ecosystem services. All links in the show notes below and for now, podcast@gmail.com if you want to get in touch now. Here's Ray

Ray O Foghlu 1:04
So home. Tree is a nature restoration charity, strong focus on native woodlands. It emerged out of an organic farm just behind me in my in West Clare. It was set up as a charity on that farm about 10 years ago. A lot of people came to that farm, it was like a community supported agriculture set up. So a lot of people came to that farm looking to engage with food and nature. And, you know, they'd heard about climate change and heard about biodiversity that so home tree was set up as a vehicle to kind of capture that interest, so people could either donate time or money to creating native woodlands and that farm, I think there was about 60,000 trees planted up there over the years. And in 2021 myself and Matt Smith and Mitch Corbett, I suppose in its own way, it outgrew the farm. The farm is still very much working away up the road. We moved down the hill into Ennis diamond. We bought a 16 acre derelict suckler farm, and we took the charity onto a professional footing, that is to say, started paying wages, and I suppose we started taking ourselves more seriously. It wasn't just a kind of a weekend gig at its at its core, we're interested in nature restoration. But I suppose our approach and not unique to us, but a strong focus of ours, is people and community. We really just believe in an Irish context, when you've got farm, you know, tiny farms, you know, like a patchwork quilt all over the country, we have 135,000 farms, average size, 30 hectares. If you're not actually dealing with people, and if you don't have the trust and strong relationships or people, you're not actually going to achieve your goals, whether they're agricultural production, productive forestry, native forestry, native restoration. If you don't get buy in from people, I think we've all come from rural backgrounds and from farm backgrounds as well. So it was fairly self evident to us that this is the way to go. You know, you get deal with the people first and then try and achieve your objectives next. In terms of activities, I think you could probably accuse us of being too broad. We have a ecology team, finance team, community team, a woodland team, and we've our we have our own tree nursery on sites. So we have, we do offer, you know, those as services, and sometimes in other situations, we offer them just for free, if, if the outcomes align with our kind of strategic objectives at the charity, which are generally to I suppose we have three pillars. One is kind of boring stuff, just about how the organization works. Is it a good vehicle to deliver what we're what we're trying to deliver, as we call it, operational excellence? So that's kind of just background systems and stuff, but they're kind of more outward facing. Elements of what we're trying to do are nature connected communities and restoring nature. So, so one piece being connecting people with nature, and the second, the actual physical implementation of nature restoration. So targets of around 60,000 Well, around 57,500 acres we want to bring into restoration in the next 10 years. That's the goal we've set ourselves. It's ambitious. It's probably about a half of 1% of all of Ireland, which makes it sound a bit less ambitious, but that's what we're trying. That's what we're trying to achieve. And you know, we're taking our job seriously. You can make lots of nice videos and lovely photos and social media posts when you're working with land and working with land and working with trees and working with communities, and we're not here just to look good. We want to actually have real, tangible impact over the years.

Dermot McNally 4:27
Yeah, yeah, there's scale there. Ray That's, that's big figures. I mean, if you were hitting those figures in it, okay, well, you can restore them, but if even a high percentage of each area per year was that far as that, it would make a massive difference to the National Achievement rate, because we're really struggling to plant trees.

Ray O Foghlu 4:45
And I'm sure that will come up as the conversation unfolds, but we will certainly be, and have already been involved in using the existing schemes to deliver a forestation as it will be prescribed or viewed. In the eyes of the state, you know, through various schemes, primarily for us, I suppose it's been the native woodland scheme or native woodland conservation scheme, but we're very much interested in where the opportunities for woodland creation outside schemes lie as well. I don't mean outside regulation. I mean very much like, you know, with proper ecological oversight, but things that maybe the current schemes don't look at. I think it's something maybe we might get on to later about where there is opportunity for woodland creation that's not actually met within the current system.

Dermot McNally 5:31
Okay, well, is it timely, then to move on to talk about a practical project that that's mentioned on the website, the wild Atlantic Rainforest project, because I presume that's part of the vehicle you hope to drive some of your your nature restoration through our

Ray O Foghlu 5:45
first kind of big break. And it was really critical for us was, you know, when we were saying, can we actually run this as a wage paying organization? Was we got a small scale EIP from the Department of Ag, we had a belief, you know, that forestry is, obviously, was, at the time, maybe a little less or no, was kind of very much stuck in the mud, you know, delivering a fraction of, probably a quarter of its yearly target. We believe that farmers were interested in trees, and we just felt they needed a bit of extra support, that it was a big decision, permanent land use change, you know, stopping, in some situations, farming a piece of land that had been farmed for generations. So that EIP we worked with 12 farmers around Milton, Albany and Claire, and it gave us a sense that we can achieve our goals in terms of not like woodland creation or nature restoration on home tree land, working with private landowners, greasing the wheels of the system such that, just to facilitate them stepping into these decisions with confidence. That really worked. I don't know the end of the amount of acres planted in the end, because there was challenges with with the department and permissions and licenses and stuff, which we can certainly chat about, but we submitted the licenses of around 100 acres on the on the couple of farms. So that kind of led us to believe, okay, like this is the this the West Coast. They're not always the easiest place to get permissions for forestry, a combination of designations for nature SBAS, sacs, but also elevation, exposure, you know, coastal proximity. And we said, okay, we can maybe we have a route to do this to create woodlands in the West. And one of the great things about the West is you have these, like hyper oceanic conditions. You know, I think the Claire is around two and a half 1000 mils of rainfall a year, but parts of Kerry and Connemara are like three and a half 1000 mils compared to Dublin. Or some of the East Coast might be 700 mills. Very wet climate. And in these wet climates, you have these oceanic woodlands. They've become to be known as temperate rainforests in recent years, have been popularized, and we said we felt it was just a great hook. You know, at the end of the day, we're in the business of kind of inspiring and selling an idea, a concept of what the future might be. And the wild Atlantic Rainforest project was kind of an umbrella to put around some of the more tangible technical work we did, like the eip, but also the community work. So at the time it was 2022 we set ourselves a goal of 4000 acres brought into restoration. Now that's not necessarily schemes that could be some of it could be schemes. Some of it could be naturally regenerated. Some of it could be peatland restoration. You know, these, these habitats exist on a mosaic on the landscape. So, like, we're not absolutely beholden to woodlands. So it's been going well, you know, we've we decided a half of it we try and do on private land, as in work, partnering with farmers, giving them the incentives and the information they need, and half on our own, we're a good way along to the target. We have another two and a half years to finish it, but yeah, certainly we have a good couple of 100 acres, or probably a couple of 1000 in the private land owner, maybe about 1200 in the private land owner, and about 700 acres of our own land on so we're making progress on that.

Dermot McNally 8:57
Tell me this ray and those forests you're talking about on those farms. Have they been degraded over time? Is their forest remaining? What condition is it in? On top of that, what was the farmer attitude when you approached them to get involved?

Ray O Foghlu 9:12
I suppose we've been lucky in that we've always kind of approached this with an opt in approach. We're never. Nobody ever has to engage with us. You know, if they do fill out an expression of interest form or, you know, follow up something with us and and they're not particularly interested in what they hear, it doesn't suit their situation, that that's fine. We're here to give information. And if that aligns with a farmer's current circumstance or situation, great. We will try and help them. And if it does, if it doesn't. So we've been lucky that way. So from that point of view, I suppose we generally get people who are already kind of thinking fairly positively about woodland creation. I suppose what I found your full time farmers, which are rarer and rarer in the West, you know, they're more screwed. List, I suppose, around the details, they want to know exactly the implications of what they're getting into, because they're trying to balance the trade off of the grass they might lose the income they might gain, versus a lot of farmers. Maybe, I see increasingly in the West, maybe they don't have someone to take on the farm, be it there's no kids there, or there's just none of the kids are interested. And I suppose they're more looking at, how does this look? Over the next 20 years, they've worked off farm. They probably had a decent income, they might have a pension, and they're just wondering, like, Can the farm sustain itself? What's the blend of Forestry and farming I'm wanting to do in the coming years? Everyone in Ireland, everyone who has land in Ireland, is is a little suspicious about permanent land use change. They're a little suspicious about forestry. You know, I'm looking up at schleifka here to my left out the window, and it's blanketed in spruce, and that's the perception of forestry. The perception of forestry, I think, is the biggest barrier. And when you can say actually, it needn't be commercial, it could be broadleaf it could be agroforestry, it could be actually the native woodland conservation scheme, where you're actually just protecting the wood. Protecting the wood that exists when they learn, maybe the flexibility that exists in it. There's a there's much more openness, but then it's a long old road, you know. If you're going through the schemes, you kind of take that initial goodwill, you know, and you've got, you say, God, I hope I can hang on to it till we get the end, till the end of the licensing process. We had a desperate time with the eip. Like all of the licenses we submitted were got a letter back saying, No broad leaves near the sea, please, uh, reapply with GPC three with sickest person that was there was just a local inspector at the time, that was his view. And that was a disaster. Like all these people have been brought in this journey, they said, I don't really want the spruce, that's, you know, but I do like broad leaves. And, you know, we said, we can make that happen. And for them now, we fought all them, and we sorted most of them out. But for a lime juice that's already viewed with a bit of people are a little bit cautious about it. To have that happen, it just kind of maybe adds to the suspicion around it.

Dermot McNally 11:59
That's challenging for you to operate on that. And as I say, when you have to fight the system, it's it's not good. I mean, is it that I've heard the situation where some inspectors are over rigorous with the application of the rules, some of them are sympathetic, but yeah, the point back to the rules, was that a case ray that you had to appeal it to a higher body, or you had to go through the appeals board? Or what was the practical way around that?

Ray O Foghlu 12:22
It wasn't a refusal, it was almost like a communication. That approach isn't going to work. We recommend this approach. So it was dealt with at that level that the inspector actually changed here in Claire around the time. Yeah, we were able to, kind of, we were able to make the case. I mean, we were, we had situations here in my own place. I have a couple acres here. I'm literally overlooking the sea. It's about 800 meters, you know, across the fields here from me. And I just planted a couple of 100 trees. When I bought it, I just planted them myself, obviously very interested. It was kind of wet ground, not it wasn't a bog, but it was wet ground, and it was very exposed. And whatever I said, see how these go. Like that was 2017 and, like, I have a five year old and a three year old, and they climb those trees. Now, like they're those trees have flown it. They're 12 foot tall. They're flying it, and they really are quite exposed. So So I had a strong sense that, like, maybe we're a little bit too conservative. Now I understand, you know, it's the public person all this that we're a little bit too conservative, particularly when it comes to trees for nature. The native woodland scheme, we're not trying to produce timber here. We're trying to produce trees for nature. So I kind of don't mind if the tree is a bit crooked. You need a forest to grow, for sure. So we were getting refusals and sites, you know, couple 100 meters up and down the road from this site that I'd seen trees thrive on, and that was frustrating.

Dermot McNally 13:45
Is part of that ray that there's so few forests on that landscape that there's a perception that if they're not there, they can't grow, whereas the reality is they were removed, or the overgrazing has stopped the forest from continuing to expand, or whatever.

Ray O Foghlu 13:58
I think it's a combination of two things. There's like a production a silver cultural mindset probably persists at some level in the Forest Service, understandably coming from a silver cultural background. It's about growing trees primarily for timber. Now look like totally acknowledged that's shifting and evolving, but that would still be embedded fairly deeply that we're trying to grow something that grows really vigorously and straight and all that, I think that that's one side of it, and that's baked into the rules. You know, I think there's still an obligation that a site should be able to carry yield class 14 timber on it, whether it's for nature or for timber. So, so that that is baked into the rules. I think the second thing is, yeah, you look out across this landscape, and there are very few trees. You know, the next village down the road from Milton Abbey is called quilty. You can translate that yourself by Quinte. There were 100% trees all over this landscape, perhaps stunted, perhaps a bit crooked, but they were here. My sense is, there's no seed source the southwest. Best is the prevailing wind here. There's not much of a seed source coming onto this so, so really, you just get the bit of Willow in the hedges and very less. So it's hard to maybe imagine that trees would do well. But, you know, individual cases down by the Armada hotel there in Spanish, point, there's a block of forestry. It must have been planted just by a private landowner. They actually did a very clever thing. They planted a ring of protective Sitka spruce. This is a big, most probably five or six hectares around a plot of broad leaves.

Dermot McNally 15:30
They've all flown it like, okay, to give it windshield.

Ray O Foghlu 15:33
Yeah, they've flown it. And I'd be very interested. Our forester at the time, and he's still a great friend of the charity madness. Crowley, he was saying, Look, if we don't get the department over the line, I wonder, could we propose things like that, maybe a sacrificial windshield of of spruce, or something like that, and put the broad leaves inside it?

Dermot McNally 15:50
So, yeah, yeah, let, yeah, there's, that's really, I suppose, an element of nursing, a nursing crop, you know. And, yeah, so that sounds good. Ray, could you touch on a little bit, maybe what a nature conservation or a forest conservation project looks like for someone who has a little bit of forest down in a ravine that's maybe over grazed and not protected and not replenishing with new stock.

Ray O Foghlu 16:15
So like for us, we're kind of, we always say we're kind of trying to build an airplane whilst also trying to fly it. We're learning with every project. With the EAP, the island farm forest, EAP, we've a new EAP in Kerry. Now we might chat about later and smaller projects along the way. We're learning kind of what, what is the optimum approach here for me, I mean, like we've done just straight conservation projects, we financially supported one in the uplands of South Kerry recently, where this fragment of old Oakwood that was just, it's there since the early 1800s but it was just being overgrazed. The underneath of it was just sheep grazed 365, days a year. So I think, I believe they're called senescent woodlands, where the trees are very much alive, but there's nothing happening in the understory, and there's no opportunity for regeneration. So, so with that, it was just a straight case of, like, of fencing off the woodland boss. You know, we'd be a lot more ambitious now in terms of the scale, that was two hectares is all that was fenced similar to what you do under the native woodland scheme. How I imagine it now, and what I think is going to play out with the Evra woodlands EIP, it'll be using a combination of funding sources and policy approaches to deliver what the landowner wants. So say they have a patch of old native woodland, you know, maybe the native woodland conservation scheme can can support that there's an area that's actually suitable for planting according to the native woodland scheme will because that's really useful. The long term payment is huge for that in terms of from the farmers point of view. So you might put some into that. And then you might have a section that says, Above the 120 meter Elevation line that the department are concerned about planting over. Think, well, well, we can't support that. Well, the eip, then has has its own funding stream for support net. What does woodland creation look like in areas or sites that are outside the current rules of the Forest Service?

Dermot McNally 18:07
Yeah, no, that sounds good. So in effect, and we'll actually move on to the over at Woodland EIP then, but yeah, you're gonna, you've got the eip as an overarching vehicle to get in and engage with landowners, and then you'll have your woodland conservation scheme and your typical laugh, or for native woodland, and you combine the three of them to bring the best results to the farmer.

Ray O Foghlu 18:28
One other thing will be, we've got some support in hometree from the conservation measures unit of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. They're very much focused on annex habitats. And you know, once you can demonstrate that, like, oh, we have a project here, they can pay, sometimes, for capital works that help to deliver on their objectives. We'll also be playing with, you know, we have a team at the moment, fantastic team at three, working on on what nature financing might look like out into the future. That's to say, like you know, how much, the extent to which existing payments can be directed towards nature, nature restoration, as in the biz payments, that there's a lot of flexibility there. What I said already the existing forestry payments, is there a role for private finance, for corporate payments, for philanthropic payments. So that's a big project we're working on at the moment. Look, I know many other people, including the state itself, are kind of really trying to examine how we're going to meet this bill coming down the tracks. Because, as you know, the targets, not just the existing forestry targets, but the incoming targets related to the nature restoration now, they're huge, like 10,000 hectares of oak wood alone per decade for the next three decades. So that's just one example.

Dermot McNally 19:39
So looking to buy or sell a forest, or maybe just wondering what broadleaf and conifer forests are making on the open market? If so, then take a look at Forest sales.ie. Where you'll find forests across the country and all the information you need to make an offer. Dive back to the chat before a let's move to the woodland. EAP. Then just give me a quick overview of it, although I suspect many of the same challenges that you've discussed with will reappear,

Ray O Foghlu 20:07
probably the same challenges here as we have here in Claire, maybe amplified a bit at a more extreme level. So these are like, I suppose, the uplands of South Kerry. It's the most of the project will take place within the reeks sac. So you've got the compounding factors of high elevations, lots of peaty ground, but also mineral pockets, unenclosed land, generally not looked at by current forestry schemes, heavily designated annex habitats all over the place. So you know, you've to be very careful like how and where you might plan woodlands. And so for us, our belief was that native trees have a role in these upland areas. And our belief is that lobbying, and important lobbying by the environmental community to get spruce out of the uplands also took the opportunities for native woodlands out of the uplands, even where ecologists would say that's a good place for woodlands, it'd be very hard to get permission. So that was our belief that there's a space for woodlands up here. It's you got to be careful with how you approach it, but there's a space for it. And so our two core objectives was determining kind of a sound ecological roadmap to creating woodlands and these designated uplands and improving the second core pillar was include improving farm incomes. These are, you know, these are sheep primarily in suckler farms. Who really like the viability is, is, you know, on a razor's edge at the moment, it's, you know, these areas were probably farmed out a hardship going back decades ago or even centuries ago, and the logic or the rationale just doesn't pertain as much anymore to Sure, maybe the lower, better fields might be farmed, but farming up the top of the mountain, you know, so you're you're seeing, what I'm seeing was a lot of abandonment, but not out of an intention to put land back into nature out of a sense of failure. So I was like, why can't we put a bit of if people are going to withdraw from parts of the landscape anyway, and that those parts of the landscape are suitable for woodland? Is there not a great overlap here where the state can achieve its objectives around woodland creation or nature restoration, and farmers can actually financially benefit from engaging with us with very little trade offs. So that was the logic to it. We, you know, the EIPs are all about proposing solutions to policy gaps. So we proposed it as a solution. I suppose we had a bit of a track record from the Ilan EIP, which did well, won a couple of awards. Yeah, we got it 1.7 million for four years. It is still a pilot scale. It's 300 hectares. So we've got a fantastic team on it now. Big focus on community. We've got a great forester associated as well as our internal forestry team, Marina and Breen and project ecologist, project manager, and I'm the project lead. So yeah, we've opened expressions of interest farms now, farmers, we have a load of people applying, and we'll select the most suitable 15 or 20 and yeah, I think we'll be out on site in the next three months, kind of assessing the first sites. Brilliant.

Dermot McNally 23:11
I'm gonna stop beyond one aspect, which I'm confused on. You mentioned 300 hectares, but then equally, you're mentioning expression of interest. So do the people need to be within that 300 hectares,

Ray O Foghlu 23:21
the catchment will be 1000s of hectares that are as in the area we defined as being in the project is the McGillicuddy reeks sac plus a five kilometer buffer, so there's 1000s of hectares in it. But we have the funding to work on 300 hectares like we're really hoping to kind of amplify the effect of the project. We can pay for 300 hectares of woodland creation on the bits that there's nothing else will cover them. So if they if the current dapham schemes won't cover them, if the conservation measures unit the native woodland scheme, so we'd hope that we can actually have a pretty big impact, maybe approaching 1000 hectares. But we have 300 hectares that we can pay a brand new type of payment for woodland creation where there's no payment existing right now.

Dermot McNally 24:05
Okay, understood. Okay. So again, you're going to combine the different schemes, but the eip is funding 300 and what does that funding look like? I have, you know, let's say 25 hectares of low land, marginal land, further up the rigs here. I'm retiring. I'm 62 I still have a couple of sheep here, but it's not working. I'm interested in working with you. How can it work for me then?

Ray O Foghlu 24:28
So what we do is we'll do a kind of a whole farm assessment and a good get a good understanding of what the farmer wants. My sense is most, as a fellow said on the radio one time last year about they were talking about de stocking. Would they be up for de stocking? He said, You know, I would be up for de stocking, but I'd still want a reason to get my ass out from in front of the fire, you know. And I think that that will pertain. I think farmers will still want to farm, but in a way that works for them going forward. So it'll be getting a sense of what they want and what land there may be interested in hearing other. Options for and then presenting options to that low field could go here, this field could go there. And I suppose the areas of land we'd be interested in are kind of Rocky bracony, unsuitable for current schemes, not sensitive habitats such as peatlands or heats. So we'd say that area there that 40 hectares of steep hillside, we can put that into the scheme. And then what that looks like the entire scheme, what that looks like then is, there's we wanted it to be, clearly of financial benefit to the farmer, right? With that was, it was a core pillar is economic benefit to upland farmers. So there's a sign up fee to make it attractive. It's around 170 a hectare. There's a results based payment of around 300 a hectare, if you get a quite a good score, and that'll taper back. That's not necessarily going to be far. You know, two and a half 1000 saplings per hectare, that's actually will be scored. And do the conditions exist on that hectare for a woodland to potentially emerge? Is there a seed source? Is there low enough herbivory? Is there invasive species? So it won't be necessarily. They get scored on woodland creation. It's like, are the conditions for future woodlands there? And then there'll be a capital budget, which will vary depending on where it's needed most, but it'll be good couple of 100 per hectare to see if there's kind of remediation works required that might be scarifying the soil. If there's a seed source there, it might be adding, you know, patchy clumps of trees, maybe in tubes. If deer are too high the fencing allocation, there's a big enough fencing allocation for the for the project over the years, but it's all directed towards sheep fencing. We're not going to attempt to exclude deer at a parcel level. We're going to control them at a landscape level. So we have a whole wild herbivore strategy being run concurrently, which will be suppressing deer and goat numbers down to a number that's that aligns or can accommodate natural regeneration of trees.

Dermot McNally 26:59
And just on that aspect, is that funded, again through the EAP, that's

Ray O Foghlu 27:04
funded through the EAP. So it's been run by two great lads, Adam Smith and Killian Murphy. Who are, you know, real deer experts. So it'll involve understanding what's the deer pressure there now, what's the local hunting effort like, you know, is there capacity in the area? Can it be directed? Can the data be gathered, and they'll monitor using herbivore impact indexes, like assessing the plants on the ground. Say, you know, the plants can kind of tell you a lot, is there a lot of ivy? There is an oil, that type of thing. And also using camera traps to understand where we're at with the deer, I think there's good research from Scotland that is a two deer per square kilometer is the kind of magic figure that allows trees to kind of get away

Dermot McNally 27:43
so, but the reality is, you're facing into every challenge here. You're not blindly ignoring one challenge. It's all you've thought through it in the plan for the eip. So you have a, you have a holistic approach.

Ray O Foghlu 27:54
That deer thing was a, was a big one. Because, you know, the traditional approach will be, look, throw up a deer fence. And I get that. I really get that. If you're just like, we have a job to do. We need to protect the trees. Throw up a deer fence. But you've seen it, I'm sure, particularly in areas with existing trees, even a year or two after, like, a tree could come down the deer fence, and like, a lot of time and effort is wasted, and it just doesn't strike me as the solution to landscape scale restoration. We'd like this pilot to kind of indicate this is the likely path forward. And my guess is it's not massive deer fenced exclosures, it's deer management at a landscape level.

Dermot McNally 28:28
Yeah, yeah, no, I think you're right there. Tell me this, and this is maybe we'll move on to this conversation about the policy environment, because if datum and the Forestry Service won't fund some of these pockets of forestry that you're proposing in, in in parts of these uplands. I mean, how can you fund them under an EIP and are you sticking to the same rules that apply to to elsewhere? So how does that work? Because it seems like slight contradiction.

Ray O Foghlu 28:57
No. So this is the whole idea. Is EIPs are probably a way of the state, like de risking an approach, new approaches, rather than the state jumping in two feet first. This is maybe run an EAP. See what we can learn from that, and we'll carry maybe the best bits forward, the bits that didn't kind of cause any difficulties or were accepted. So we don't have to play by the same rules. I mean, like, of course, like, you know, environmental sensitivities wheeled as a full time ecologist, and the NPWS is one of our operational group partners. So this will all be done with high levels of ecological oversight, but some of the rules we don't have to abide by would probably be more coming from the silver cultural side of the house. So say, for example, the elevation. You know, we're not limiting ourselves to 120 meters. We're not beholden to, you know, trees being free of competitive growth by year four, we're not committing. We don't care if there's more than 25% open stone or boulders on the ground. Doesn't matter to us. These things don't matter where we're talking about woodlands for nature. Or not for timber. So certainly, some of those rules, we won't have to buy by probably a key one, and we're being completely explicit with it, with the landowners, is this isn't, this doesn't come with a permanent land use change. It's not. We're not. You know, that's not what it is. This is an agri environment.

Dermot McNally 30:15
Why is that? Am I not right in saying that anyone who plants trees or has copses or areas of forest, native woodland running down a ravine at the back of the farm. Is that not completely protected under legislation, it would

Ray O Foghlu 30:30
be, but at a certain point it would start to be protected by the legislation that pertains to felling licenses. Perhaps, if we start, we're only this. This project is four years. So we'll be paying farmers to explore opportunities for woodland regeneration. It might not even be planted dharma. This could be allowing white wild woodland spread themselves for four years. That's not going to so we're being clear with the landowners. If at the end of the fourth year, you decide it's not in your best interest to keep going with this process, that's fine. I think we need to be honest. As an EAP, that's all we've got the funding for after that. What I'd like to say to the farmers is I believe that the nature restoration law, or potentially other commitments the state has will mean that there will be an opportunity to continue funding at that point using a different mechanism, but I cannot and won't make that promise now, nor will that farmer be in a situation where the forest has has hit the threshold or to criteria where a felling license is relevant. You might be talking at this age about a, you know, scattered birch trees, you know, less than the thickness of my tongue across the field, maybe 345, foot tall, that's the stage where you'll be at which, which, which wouldn't have its own level of protection. So does that make sense?

Dermot McNally 31:47
Yeah. No, that that makes sense. Yeah. Because, as you said, your project is for four years, and as we all know, and especially probably in those environments, you know, your trees aren't going to be huge and and anyway, you're not talking about blanket afar on 20 flat Hectors. You're going to be doing, point two of a hectare somewhere, and maybe an acre somewhere, as this type of stuff is that that's kind of you're going to see a patchwork or

Ray O Foghlu 32:11
No, I would say, I would say it'll be bigger now, like, I mean, of course, we need to be cognizant of the rules and the laws in the Forest Service. We'll be working very closely with them, as well as Chagas, because on the operational group to make sure you know if there are plantings specifically going on in these kind of more elevated areas, that they happen in compliance with the rules that exist. So my sense is it will be that they'd have to stay lower than the agro forestry threshold of 400 to the hectare. I think that's what the acres woodland creation plots are they? They have to stay below that threshold, that where, where a license requirement will kick in. So look, this is something all that the the first step will be to get the land in. It'll be much bigger plots than half hectare. These will be 20 hectare plots, hopefully bigger. But if there is plant into a car that will be sporadic enough that it will be below any thresholds that will kind of kick in the requirement to get a license. Now, we also might apply for licenses for trees that we don't expect the state to fund. We say, Okay, well, if we go this route, we probably need a license. We'll get that license on the understanding that we're not entering a scheme. We're just getting permission to create this woodland. This all comes about at the stage when we have the land passes in the door. You know, the team with our foresters and our colleges is going to sit down and say, what are the challenges here? What are the strategies we're going to implement? Where do they interact with current legislation? What needs? What are the next steps? Then this is really all about learning as we go, Darren

Dermot McNally 33:43
on the learning, then you have existing experience from an EIP tell me, this does the knowledge that comes out of the EIPs, because I've read that there's been great EIPs in the Burran and different places, and sometimes it seems as if the great work gets done, but the but a follow up, EAP isn't, isn't funded, and some of the learning doesn't seem to get integrated into policy. Would that be a fair comment, or is that?

Ray O Foghlu 34:11
Yeah, they're one of the first engagements actually, the eip team went on, was uplands event up in letter frack. And I suppose I've been in the space a couple of years. Some of years. Some of them were a bit newer to it, and they were like, God, there was a bit of disdain or hesitation or suspicion around the IPS and some of the farmers. And I said, I totally understand that. You know, these are short term projects. They come, they go. The hope is that, look, they're never about achieving impact at scale. And to be fair to them, they're about, you know, like understanding potential future solutions. But I suppose from the perspective of the local landowners, they came everything was great. We were doing all this, and then they just disappeared. And I think it can be perceived in the meantime that the state can look great. The state can say, look at these great projects we're doing all over the country, with the hen harrier and the Curlew and the woodlands and Claire. But when it comes down to the more the hard end of things, and like agri environmental policy, as you're referencing in the Burran there was a life project not totally dissimilar to EIP when it, when its learnings were transitioned to the to the actual acres project, they got very much watered down. You know, they got very man. There was a lot of unhappiness there. So look, I can understand a little bit of caution around the IPS, and that's one of the reasons I'm saying dharma, that we're being explicit. We're paying you for four years. You know, we expect you to, if you want to get the full payment to in those four years, to kind of comply with, what with the advice of the EAP outside that we would neither expect or, yeah, you to keep going with anything that you're not explicitly being paid for.

Dermot McNally 35:59
If you're interested in advertising your organization to forest owners and forestry professionals, get in touch to find out more. Now, back to the chat with Ray. Ray this is a this is a great project, and it strikes me that you're setting up the next 20 100 years in this particular location. But I wonder what farming is going to look like there when these farmers are getting older, and as you say, there isn't succession. What happens?

Ray O Foghlu 36:32
I think there's a pivot needed where we actually say the uplands aren't unproductive. They're unproductive for food, but they're hugely productive for carbon, or could be hugely productive for water quality, maybe even they could be hugely productive for timber, hugely productive for biodiversity, hugely productive for immunity. But we've always taken most of those things for granted, so my hope is that we'd actually start paying for them. From now on, we say we actually need the good water quality. We need carbon sequestration. So so that's one thing. And there's a combination there of, like the state, you know, delivering the payments, but also the farmers asking for them, and imagining what their future could be. Because I think they're kind of walking to the end of a cliff this idea of, like, 30 euro for the old 30 euro for the odd that, like, you know, a couple of 100 for the soccer cow. I don't think there's any future in those kind of headed style payments. I'd like to see where it works. You know, sheep and soccer cow stay in the uplands, but it's about using them as an aid to provision of ecosystem services. That's what I really believe. The future is there. I think Tech has a big role. I was up in the bog there near Roundstone in Connemara yesterday, and I just saw the most gorgeous site. I looked to the right of me, and I saw a herd of seven Dexter cows, completely unenclosed landscape, Rocky, slightly boggy in areas, as you know, bits of acid grassland, really diverse grassland. And there they were with the GPS collars on their neck and their grazing the areas that needed grazing on the landscape and avoiding the other areas. Tech like that's got a has a massive role to play in the uplands. Now, for that to work, we need a successful period of succession to occur. We need, like the current generation, to be able to convince the next generation there's actually a future here for you. You know, there's actually a life worth living. And you know, the income figures in these farms, it's very low, but people farm them out of a love for farming. So there will be a desire to stay farming, rather than a desire to this thing needs to it needs to wash its own face, but it doesn't need to be hugely profitable.

Dermot McNally 38:35
I struggle to see how it works, because I think that we talk at the talk of valuing nature, but when it comes to the bit your project, the site, EIP, and what you're doing through different funding sources, it's unique.

Ray O Foghlu 38:48
It's one of the points I wanted to make, you know, like we've given farmers no reason yet to believe they have a future in nature restoration. In my opinion, we've designated land and we said, Oh, that's really important land, you know, for nature. So we designated, and you can't do this, that or the other on it. They said, great. So there's some kind of a payment maybe, maybe down the line, sometimes not, you know, they were really let down there. Then the agri environmental payments, you know, some of the first reps payments are coming in. I spoke to a lad at the 11,000 total farm payment in in around the year, 2000 the maximum someone could hope to achieve in regular acres now is, you know, 6000 maybe if they're in CP, and 78 maybe nine, if they're doing exceptionally well. Whilst hearing that, like nature and climate is really important, that that speaks for itself. So I think, you know, I definitely think a lot about this, like, if we want actually there to be a future for these farmers, you need to take a cap off what they can earn for the environment. You want it to be possible for a farmer who's farming for nature to be as ambitious as a farmer who's farming producing liters of milk that if they produce more nature. More curly nests, more species rich grasslands that they can just do really well out of it. I think we probably are slow to acknowledge the the the about turn that we've actually asked them to make, you know, like literally 1000s of years of a mindset of production, like, how can I get the most from what I'm doing. You know, that was always the mindset. I can't remember the government minister in the 30s who said, you know, another year, another sow, another acre under the plow. You know, you know, every year a bit of improvement. And then 1520, years ago, no, no, actually, that's not what we wanted to do. So like you were trying to undo a lot of, you know, deeply embedded kind of cultural norms there of what a farmer is and what they're to do, and what a what a good field even looks like. You know, what a good mountainside looks like. So that would, that was always going to be a challenge there. So I think to overcome that challenge you would have, you really would have needed, like, a rock solid proposition or proposal for them to step into. And that wasn't there. It was kind of watery and uncertain. And when, when they did engage, they were let down, you know, and I'll finish on this like, but we're seeing 20 years for farmers on the native woodland scheme still being kind of, it's there's no massive uptake for it. And maybe they're thinking at longer timescales. You know, a friend of mine caused, the cause the native woodland scheme, shackling oneself to penury. You know, it's a great payment for 20 years. But after 20 years, you know, you've got, you know, an oak crop, maybe the thickness of your leg. That's not got any commercial value for another, what you'd probably know better than me

Dermot McNally 41:39
30 years. It's simply non commercial. And then, of course, if you are productive minded, and you're planting Sitka, you're losing 35% of your productive area. Now, there's, there's part of that is, is totally correct, but there's, there's also, I wonder at the logic of planting fringe broad leaves, just to pretend that we've got a broadleaf element on a productive forest. I mean, is that? Wise Ray couldn't

Ray O Foghlu 42:07
agree more, what are these things going to look like in 20 years, these strange like five meter lines of trees that are often unsuitable or planted without too much sophistication. It feels tokenistic that that that obligation is it? Is it 15 or 20% Yeah, for me, like planted in blocks. I know Manus has always been big on this, planted in blocks, in the most suitable parts of the site, where it'll emerge as a as a really healthy native woodland in its own right. Or for me, don't obligate the don't obligate the 20% at a parcel level, obligated at a county level, or a, you know, a regional level. Say, look within that region, we generally want X amount of broadleaf and then create proper permanent broadleaf forests, and also then create like productive forests. I think we should obligate diverse productive species, conifers, because I think if we don't, we're going to pitch landowners back into a ash Part Two again, where they have all their eggs in one species basket and they just lose everything. I do think even if it reduces the profitability a little bit, there should be diversity within the productive species. So as people can can hedge a little bit, and they don't lose everything. I'm not sure your thoughts on that.

Dermot McNally 43:27
Yeah, we have this challenge that the devil, you know, I said, okay, even though you're taking the risk with the monoculture element, it's easy to grow, it's fast to grow, and it grows great timber that's in demand. So it's, it is a challenge to to find replacement species for something that is so good.

Ray O Foghlu 43:47
Absolutely, it's like the, you know, it's people talk, you know, that I'd be probably considered an environmentalist, and people say, you know, they put all kinds of negative connotations on Sitka, toxic sit and all this and like, let's Sitka is popular because it was just such a fantastic tree. Just did the business almost anywhere you put it. As you say, the timber was good. It was in demand. There's nothing wrong with the tree. It's how we've maybe sometimes deployed the tree in an appropriate context.

Dermot McNally 44:19
Maybe we'll finish on that. Just get your thoughts on clearfell as a model Ray, because I have aspirations for continuous cover on a site in Monahan, as it happens. But I have other sites, and I know from the landscape that CCF is going to be very challenging. The soil, the elevations, how they were planted. From your point of view as a member of the team there at hometree. How do you see clearfell? Is there a place for it in the forestry sector going forward?

Ray O Foghlu 44:47
Like the first thing I'd say is, this is certainly not my area of expertise. I don't personally mind it once, once it's done sensitively. I know even certain, certain. Bird species almost need it like well, not needed. It's probably not an optimum situation for hen Harris to be nesting in young spruce, but they do seem to use it if it's available to them. So there is probably a logic and a rationale. And I'm sure, I'm sure, you know, the accountant would tell you it's an efficient way of doing things. I think it's, it's just about mitigating the impact. And I know there was some work done on, I think it was the pearl mussel EIP in Kerry, where they've spent a couple of 100 euro a hectare on additional mitigation measures like silt traps and ponds or terminal like running drains out into settling pits and stuff like that. And they found them to be very effective. It's just, you know, does that? Would we implement that? You know? So for me, look, I really see the value of it. I'd imagine there's ways of doing it really well, and maybe that's the direction we need to head.

Dermot McNally 45:54
Yeah, I think you're right. When I think done badly is not right.

Ray O Foghlu 45:57
Now, I would say this Dharma like it's, it really saddens me to see, you know, the Sitka being replanted into deep blanket peats. And it's still happening. Quiz, you probably feel they need to fulfill their replanting obligation that you know that's that's what the law says. I know someone who worked on on the process of of getting the planning permission needed to take inappropriately planted Sitka off some bogs out in the west of Ireland, and it was hugely expensive and hugely bureaucratic to get the permissions needed to just do the right thing the same, I would say, in things like hen Harry or SPS, you know, like the experts know that, like, you know, we need to bring it below a certain threshold. I cannot understand. You know, given the bird is in such precarious circumstances, why we can't say, Cool, what is that number? What will it take to bring the total cover down below that number? And just, let's get on with it. You know, there's probably multiple wins there. I can't understand where the resistance is. But look, I don't operate at those levels where the decisions are being made.

Dermot McNally 47:01
No, Me, neither. Ray, is there anything we didn't touch on there that you wanted or hope to mention today?

Ray O Foghlu 47:05
I like this idea that the future is rural. You know, there's lots of things that rural Ireland can provide, both from a cultural point of view, but also food point of view, from an amenity point of view, from a ecosystem services point of view. And, you know, I think we need a kind of a vibrant sector, which could involve food companies, forestry companies, nature restoration charities, working in that space, and all these people just advocating for what a new rural future could be. That's what I want people to kind of maybe get excited about.

Dermot McNally 47:36
No very good Ray thanks a million for joining me.

Ray O Foghlu 47:39
Dharma, you're a gentleman, and we will chat again soon. Thanks for

Dermot McNally 47:44
listening to my chat with Ray. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please like or rate it wherever you listen, and please share with someone who might be interested. Bye, for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai