Forestry Now

speaker-0 (00:01.784)
Welcome to Forestry Now, where we explore the forces impacting profitable and sustainable management of commercial forests and natural woodlands. I'm Dermot McNally. Today I speak with Forester Patty Purser. Patty was an early advocate for continuous cover forestry and a key figure in the establishment of the Irish branch of ProSilva, who are dedicated to CCF. We speak about the enhancement of broadleaf forestry through timely and appropriate interventions.

And how this can lead to a wide range of commercial, silvicultural, and biodiversity benefits. The Woodland Improvement Scheme grant assists owners to manage these forests, and so we talk about how this scheme works and how it supports both a clear fell and a continuous cover management approach. And finally, we discuss a longer-term vision Patty has: to see Ireland once again covered in oak trees that are managed for timber and ecological benefit. But first,

I started off by welcoming Paddy and asking him to introduce himself.

speaker-1 (01:04.026)
I'm Patty Purser is my name. I'm a professional forester. I would have qualified from UCD in the early 1990s. So kind of 25 years of working in the over tw nearly 30 years working in the forestry sector in Ireland. And I've really, you know, from early days done a lot of work in I suppose unconventional forestry, what was known as unconventional forestry then, which would have been broadleaves.

and moved into what we call continuous cover forestry and been a kind of pioneer in the development of that practice in Ireland. And I do I I've worked with every kind of forest, but my kind of love or my passion would be in continuous cover forestry and with native woodlands as well and broadleaked woodlands. I've been lucky to develop a kind of a practice around that with a big range of forest owners, institutional owners, private state

small, large. As on that kind of journey, I suppose we we kind of gathered and we've people of like mind, whether they're forest owners or other foresters, we've kind of found ourselves. And together we've formed a group called Pro Silva, which is the Pro Silva Ireland, which is the Irish chapter of a European body or European network if you like, called Pro Silva. And there's I think there's about twenty seven different European countries.

each with their own chapter of ProSilva. And the that organization r really is an advocate and promoter and a champion of what we call continuous cover forestry, which is a non clear cut form of forest management. it's kind of defined by what it what it isn't rather than what it is, because there's lots of different c types of continuous cover management, but it's not clear file management. So that tends to be the most suitable

method of management for broadleak management anyway. But we're also using it in conifer woodlands and in transforming commercial forestry plantations or conifer plantations into more mixed and more resilient permanent forest as well. so that's been going since that organization was set up in the year two thousand. And so that's twenty six years old now as well. And we

speaker-1 (03:25.45)
Yeah, that's grown from strength to strength and it's been very very influential in the development of Irish forestry policy. it's a c kind of a growing cultural shift in the way forests and forest owners see their forests as well. It's part of I suppose it's part of a development of an ongoing forestry culture, if you like, within the within Ireland, which would have been absent.

speaker-0 (03:45.762)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We didn't have the trees. We didn't have the know-how. We didn't have the the body of trained professionals and we and we do now, so so that's good. So you mentioned some of the type of people that you work with, the customers institutional and private owners as well. So maybe we talk about the different types of broadleaf forests you encounter, just to give people an idea, because they're not all the same. You have native woodlands, you have old estate woodlands, you've natural woodlands.

Which weren't planted as native woodlands. They're just naturally occurring on the landscape. So maybe you'd just talk about a few of them and how and maybe pick out a few big features of those big, very broad categories that I've thrown at you there.

speaker-1 (04:25.58)
Yeah, so there is a a a broad range. So I suppose the ones to start with would be what are known as ancient woodlands. So those are woods which had been continuous woodlands for as long as history has recorded them and or woodland sites. A lot of those would be in state ownership and some in private ownership as well, but they would they typically ones which were saved or in in accessible places as well, from the kind of the exploitation and the demise of woodlands.

That took place over millennia, basically, in Ireland. Many of those are now managed by the state, particularly the National Parks and Wildlife Service, would have ownership of those, and we've been helping them with the development plans for those areas and those woodlands. And I I know Wicklow is particularly rich where I come from in Wicklow, it's particularly rich in those types of woodland. And then there's the a similar category, but what I would describe as old estate woodlands. they're not necessarily in old estates, but

They're typical of what you would find in old domain private estates. And they would have been planted not necessarily as commercial woodlands, but as part of an kind of an overall property management system, including estate boundaries, kind of for hunting grounds or for rearing game birds and things like that. And they would have been retained, not necessarily planted for that reason, but retained for those reasons as well. And they tend to be mixed. They would have had

varying degrees of management over the years. They tend to be mixed woodlands, not all native woodlands, lots of beech and non-native broadleaves, conifers as well, European conifers like European larch, silver fir, things like that. So there's those those kind of woodlands. And then there's there's a whole new generation of woodlands which have broadleaf woodlands which have been planted by the as part of the afforestation programs the

successive afforestation programs in as part of forest policy. And those are of varying ages, but the that most of that planting would have been conifer woodlands. But from the very beginning there were some broadleaf woodlands planted. This is from the kind of 1980s on. And they're on farms, the owners would not be have a tradition in forest management or woodland management. And they as with successive forest policy development and grant

speaker-1 (06:51.224)
development, the incentives for planting those would have increased and the policy around them and support around them would have been stronger. Now we've got to a stage where actually they form probably a greater part of the afforestation programme, the small afforestation programme that we have, than the commercial conifer establishment. And also they are components of larger afforestation projects where the policy or the requirement would be to plant

A percentage of broadleaves as part of a wider plantation. So you know that percentage has incre increased over the years. I remember when it was five percent, and now it's a 20% requirement for broadleaves. so there has been a pretty substantial estate or portfolio, if you like, of forestry, of broadleaf forestry planted across the state. That has generally been a monocultural establishment, you know, single species.

we all know about ash dieback and ash was probably the most predominantly planted species because it was seen as a relatively short rotation broadleaf with a a market potential for firewood and particularly hurly butts as well. And so th the typically these plantations of the kind of the modern farm broadleaves would be kind of single species or maybe one or two species. They might have had a nurse species, but they would be oak or ash.

Al alder, birch, and it's rare that you'd find kind of a mix of species planted or a substantial mix. There might be one or two species, but the one kind of meaningfully mixed, if you like. Those are the kind of broad categories. Then there's other there are other categories like scrub woodland, which is kind of developed in through abandoned land and or just through unmanaged land. And there's kind of minor categories like that. And they're important as well from a biodiversity point of view.

We no don't tend to be in under active management.

speaker-0 (08:47.49)
Yeah, okay. Well there is. There's a there's a very wide range there.

speaker-1 (08:51.284)
And in fairness to the Forest Service and there has been different organisations that have campaigned to try and get people more involved in the broadleaf management. And there are now there are incentives for owners to do so. And one of the reasons that people didn't do so was it was never seen as commercially viable or opportune to to get involved in the management because the cost, the production is is way lower in those broadleaves are much slower growing. The co the type of products from thinnings

really there's not a whole lot of diversity in product. It's mainly all going to firewood the early thinnings and the cost of harvesting versus the cost of or the the rate of production. There's an imbalance there. So there at best there can be break-even kind of situations, early thinning, particularly with kind of expensive machinery and the time involved and the the kind of low production. There are grants, the Forest Service kind of stepped in to kind of make that more attractive and to try and get people involved and engaged in the

management of the broadleaves. And so there would be kind of early thinning grants for for broadleaves through the woodland improvement scheme. That kind of thinning, Chagas have done a lot of work in trying to promote that great work and on research as well, kind of on what that type of management should look like. And it generally involves some early early thinning work to promote the best quality stems that are identified in the stand. The intensity is not that important.

it's more to do with kind of getting in and identifying really good trees with long term future potential, what people often refer to as PCTs, which are permanent crop trees, lassociative names for them for those, but basically looking at finding trees which have a long term potential for quality timber production and they and kind of I suppose framing the management around those or trying to develop those trees and crown development of those trees and

is it's kind of developing, as I say, a a a framework a management framework around those. But the management has generally been still using lar kind of conventional forestry machinery where we would put racks in machine paths in and we do a selection either side of the machine paths. And that has worked.

speaker-0 (11:05.624)
Can we come to that in a second, right? Because I want to just step one step back before we get into the operational side of it, right? And I just wanted to maybe we could flag a couple of the main motivations at this point that people might make an intervention in their broadleaf, and then we'll get into the practical bits. So we have a number of reasons that someone might engage in their woodland the broadleaves. It could be commercial, it could be for silvicultural reasons.

Or maybe for biodiversity and and maybe, as I say, we could talk about those three broad categories of motivations for broadlife intervention and then we'll get on to some of those practical tips you were starting to talk about.

speaker-1 (11:46.296)
The woods would have been planted at relatively high stocking rates or densities of trees per hectare, and minimum of two and a half thousand and often over three thousand trees per hectare planted. So when they close canopy and kind of when they get to a let's say a semi-immature stage, there's not much happening underneath them, just like in the conifers, there's not much happening on the ground flora. So thinning interventions basically

regardless of the management objectives, whether they're commercial or whether it's just kind of purely silvicultural stand development, which is effectively the tools you would use for commercial development or for biodiversity. And lots of owners are very focused on that now as well. Pinning those woods and trying to develop them, in terms of developing longer term resilience, a structure, what we call structure, which is

where all the trees are not of the same size and the same height, where there may there are opportunities for understory development, ground floor development, kind of an increase in the deadwood component of stands, these all biodiversity kind of gains, if you like. Thinning will promote lots of different objectives. And then, you know, you your thinning your selection in your thinning is really what steers it in one direction or another. And so you might

make it one type of selection of trees to retain and trees to take out based on, let's say, a biodiversity focus management and a different set of trees for retention, for removal, based on a commercial kind of future. And there's a lot there's a big overlap in between those as well. So but thinning versus no thinning, the thinning supports all of the all of the potential objectives really for the wood. And

And that is what's supported by policy and the and the Forest Service Grant system. And it's really when a forest owner gets to engage with their woodland as well and to see what they have, because often before that point it's very it's can be quite hard to access, to get in and to see and so selecting trees for for whatever objectives they might have is a really engaging kind of process. And it's one one of the most enjoyable things that I do in my job is in the marking of trees at the marking of thinnings.

speaker-1 (14:09.144)
Particularly when you have an owner with you and you get to discuss and that's when the real kind of I suppose engagement happens for owners. So th that's one intervention, you know, the thinning, but there should have been or the would have been probably at the establishment stage, obviously there's the species selections, you know, which is really important in terms of, you know, defining what or supporting the objectives, the long term objectives of the wood. And then

Also during the establishment phase, the kind of for quality development and the and this is a requirement of the afforestation scheme is the shaping, early shaping of broadleaves where just with the secretaires, you know, if there's double leaders or trees which can be improved, I suppose at that stage, from a timber production point of view at least, through the singling out of of a leader or the kind of early printing of kind of heavy side branching and so on.

The the species selection, just the shaping, and then I suppose the early tinning and following that, probably pruning of the of the selected trees or the what what I called earlier the PCTs, the the potential crop trees or the future trees. And then in the background of that, we've another issue with broadleaves and broadleaf management, which is ongoing year in, year out. And for those people who live in areas with high deer density, they would be aware of of this.

Because deer where deer densities or deer populations are high, they can be very impactful and damaging to broadleaf trees and they particularly seek them out and for shelter, but also as for further browsing, fraying, bark stripping, scoring of trees, and so on. So deer management is an important part of forest management and particularly for broadleaf forest management. So again, that's something that isn't kind of time bound to a particular phase in the

in forest establishment or a thinning stage, it's something that's needs to happen on a pretty much an an annual basis as well.

speaker-0 (16:13.856)
Okay, so then the commercial reasons then, Patty, let's just if we can just talk through them. There is a huge overlap here, as you've said, that no matter why someone is going into a woodland, the some of the outcomes spread across the different categories. But I mean, if we were focused on our woodland, our broadleaf for purely commercial reasons, what does that look like when you go to pick the trees then when you're marking

For a first thin, then we'll say you're gonna go in and mark some of your trees, or is the first thin s such a light touch that th you may not even need to mark individual trees?

speaker-1 (16:53.654)
You would see the first thing really is an opportunity for two things. One is the development of access and a long term infrastructure of access through the wood. And that needs to be thought out as to what what that looks like in the long term. and the second thing is really as simple as identifying trees with long term quality potential. This is on the commercial side. So regardless of the species, trees which have a potential to produce high value.

Timber in the long term and identifying those and just doing something for them that they don't get lost or don't get bullied by neighboring trees, which may be of poorer quality, and they have a chance to develop their crowns and to put on what I call fat, they put on girth. If you can achieve those two things in your in your early thinning, that's all that you take 99% of what you need to do. And the reason behind it is with broadleaves far more so than with

conifers with broadleaves, the difference in price between a broadleaf of high quality versus broadleaf of mediocre, medium, average quality is massive, is absolutely massive. So I'll give you an example, you know, if you grow oak for furniture grade, which can be have some some kind of knots in it and as long as the timber is relatively straight, but you know, you can put rough planking out of it for flooring or for furniture. It

has a maybe a price of about 150 euro per cubic meter. But if you can grow that timber and manage it such that it would be super suitable for coopering for whiskey barrels or for even for veneer, then the price is multiple to that. So coopering oak would be worth about five hundred euro a cubic meter, and veneer oak is worth probably worth about a thousand euro or more upwards for per cubic meter. So those kind of differences in value are

Absolutely. They they're achieved that that is actually achieved in the early management. You can't retrofit quality at a late stage into broadleaves. It has to be instilled at the very beginning or or found and supported at the very beginning.

speaker-0 (19:05.224)
It's good that you put figures on that, but just for context, what kind of a cubic meter price for firewood then? Just so that the the a listener can compare.

speaker-1 (19:14.316)
Yeah, so we go down the other end of the scale. So, you know, when you get large cement oak, which is going furniture, I mentioned about a hundred and fifty euro, but if you're selling that as firewood, you're probably down to like fifty fifty euro cubic meter. Okay. And the same tree, the same age tree or the trees in the same plantation can get fifty euro cubic meter if it's all firewood, or north of a thousand euro a cubic meter if it's going for veneer. At the moment we don't have veneer quality or veneer

milling in Ireland or veneer processing in Ireland. but all of these things will come if the quality is there. And that's kind of part of the development of forestry in Ireland. If the resource is there, industries develop around the the resource. That's what happens in across Europe. You know, people travel across borders in Europe to find the best quality hardwoods and for making musical instruments or whatever.

speaker-0 (20:09.418)
One last question on the commercial reasons and then we'll move on to maybe some of the silver cultural benefits of thinning. But can you talk to the value of the log in the first six meters? It's often said that the that eighty percent of the value of a really good tree is in the first of a good broadleaf is in the first six meters. Now that's a huge generalization, but can you explain that to a listener why that would be the case?

speaker-1 (20:34.862)
Well the reason is first of all, the timber with the largest dimension is in the first six meters. So and secondly, it's the the section which is easiest managed as well. So from you can control as a forester, you can control how that stem looks through pruning up to six meters or beyond up to up to probably about nine meters. But it's very hard once the crown breaks and then once the crown develops.

Further up the stem, it's very hard to control quality at that point and beyond. The other thing you can do is with and this is kind of a big thing in silvicultural practice in on the continent where you have an understory species like hornbeam or beech used to keep the light from the stems of the oak. In Ireland we have hazel and holly, which do a similar job in beech as well, to stop what we call apricormic branching or side branching coming out and bursting out of.

the side same, which it then kind of effectively downgrades the the timber. So we can manage all those things civiculturally to create or to develop high quality and maintain high quality timber. But it's very hard to do that in the canopy of the of the tree. It's it's easier to do it in the in the first six meters. And that's where the value really

speaker-0 (21:51.642)
Brilliant. Okay. We've outlined, I suppose, how that intervention can move you from pulp, low grade, firewood grade trees for selling into sawlog and veneer quality. And and as you say, it has to be done in the early years. You can't wait till the trees 100 and retrospectively put in the effort to get the value. So it's it's a little bit little and often over the years is probably

the the way of approaching broadleaves, wouldn't that be it, Patty?

speaker-1 (22:22.54)
Yes. And it's not so critical that it has to be done at a particular age, but it's during a stage of development. The the critical stage is those early kind of early couple of thinnings where you devo you start to develop crowns and you're you're releasing the crowns and getting crown development on the on the high quality trees. And then you're con effectively what you're doing is you're concentrating growth. The overall growth is is on a per hectare basis, but if you can

you can concentrate that growth on as many of the higher quality stems as possible rather than on poorer quality stems. And then that changes the economics in your favor. Rather than growing lots of firewood, you're you're basically here trying to get as much of the volume onto the trees with the greatest quality potential instead.

speaker-0 (23:11.896)
Yeah, brilliant. Okay. So another thing that is often t talked about from a thinning regime, some of the benefits is that it's reducing the stand uniformity of as you say, a lot of our broadleaves were planted as monocultures, but it also increases wind stability. How does that happen? I mean, talk me through this. The the forest is planted in a block, everything's standing up, and now you're you're you're telling me that thinning here is gonna somehow help.

Increased wind stability. Explain that to someone listening that maybe doesn't just fully get that.

speaker-1 (23:43.406)
This is a universal issue, not unique to broadleaves. Now immediately after thinning, when you've kind of opened the canopy, you can be a little bit more vulnerable to wind. But in the long term interest of the sand, what thinning does, it it allows crown development, it it maintains a lower centre of gravity on trees, and it also allows root development as well, and greater root plate development and greater

I suppose root volume development. And both of those things reduce the vulnerability of stems to blowing. But at that's at an individual tree level, but also at a forest level. Thinning then also allows ground floor development and what I called earlier structural development, where you start to get regeneration and and conditions for the d woodland development of maybe trees that you didn't plant and that coming in like holly and hazel.

native species coming in, hawthorn and so on. And what they do is they create an an understory within the forest as well. They are able to that's what we call structure. So you have multi canopy and they were able to absorb a lot of wind as well. When the wind comes through the w the forest, they're able to absorb wind and take the energy out of wind, which adds as an additional protection and or reduces the risk of the the rest of the stand blowing.

so if you can picture a situation where you have every tree in the wood is exactly the same, the same height, the same shape, same size, that's a a very a kind of uniform or homogenous kind of forest. That is mechanically that is less ris resistant to wind than if you've got something with lots of different shapes and sizes and levels and textures and and so on, which is what a mixed woodland would have and a structured woodland with good structure would have.

And there's lots of kind of research done with kind of wind models where and wind tunnels where they create these kind of structures artificially and they can they've proven that. But for me, like the b the big s single thing is actually the individual tree in in instilling in what's the word? It would be instilling individual stability on individual trees. So you're giving trees an opportunity to develop their crowns.

speaker-1 (26:08.872)
maintain a low center of gravity and developing kind of strong root. And also when you free a tree or by thinning it, they become less dependent on their neighbors for support. So when a tree blows and and leans up against the neighboring tree, it becomes dependent on that tree in in a in a windy situation. If you suddenly remove that neighboring tree, then that support is gone and they're much more vulnerable. But if you can get in at an early stage and do your thinning,

And instill individual stability on trees. They don't they can grow up without that mutual or without that neighboring support, if you like, and they can stand on their own two feet within the wood. Or their own one foot.

speaker-0 (26:51.086)
Lovely, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you've covered quite well as the how the thinning of the woodland then enhances biodiversity. Because what you're saying is there's natural regeneration of ground flora as well as in natural trees, self-seeding. And the the fact that you've moved from a monoculture, and I've seen this myself in in a pure sycamore, a pure oak stand, pure beach.

That the ground flora is non-existent is quite often non-existent because of the heavy canopy above you. So we often think of of conifer plantations as as being dead zones underneath. But the reality is there's there's there's quite limited variation in ground flora in monoculture, unthinned broadleaf plantation as well. So your thinning is improving that. And can you just speak to the fact that when we have

Ground, flora, and fauna, how that helps improve water quality management going forward. Because I think there's a connection there. If you have a soil that i has only a litter bed as opposed to a soil that has a range of smaller species, that that can help improve the quality of the the water management. Is that right, Patty?

speaker-1 (28:10.802)
yeah, in in general it's the capacity for a woodland to retain water and to r reduce or or slow the f what would the phrase we use is slow the flow of water out of the woodland is greatly enhanced if there's ground flora than if there's no ground flora. that's twofold. One is that the ground floor acts as a physical kind of break, if you like, for water leaving the site.

that it's it slowed up, it gets water gets caught up physically in the in the ground flora or slowed down. And secondly, the actual growth of those and that vegetation, ground flora, is absolutely absorb just like the trees, it's it's absorbing water. And through transpiration, it's the transpiration process, it's it's actually absorbing water as well. So it the amount like the wood is able to re absorb, retain water. But if there's no ground flora, basically there's no

There's nothing holding the water on the site. It can run off the surface quite quickly, particularly on slopey sites. This wouldn't be an issue on flat sites or but particularly on slopey sites. And if there's drains on the site, even more so. And the water will there's nothing hold it, it'll run off. And if it gets momentum, it'll carry sediment and and so on as well, silt and sediment with it. So yes, the like that's generally it's not seen as an issue in broadleaf woodlands anyway.

And more of an issue in Conifer woodlands, but it can be an issue on certain broadleaf sites where there's where where there is no ground flower.

speaker-0 (29:42.158)
This podcast is kindly supported by the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. If you're thinking of planting a new forest or keen to access information on financial and technical supports to manage your existing forest, then go to gov.ie forward slash forestry for you. I'll include that link and other critical details about the guest and this topic in the show notes. Now back to the chat.

Patty, can we just finish up with biodiversity by addressing one thing? It's often talked about that dead wood, a tree that's dead but standing, a snag, it has more biodiversity often attached to it than a living tree. And and some people will will want to actively encourage the development of some snags or dead, they'll even ring bark, they'll kill a tree and leave it standing to improve biodiversity. But why does that help biodiversity is my question.

speaker-1 (30:38.67)
Well, there's two types of deadwood. there's deadwood on standing trees and deadwood which is on the ground or that's fallen, lying on the ground. And they both offer different kind of opportunities for different kind of ranges of invertebrates, fungi, and so on. Generally standing deadwood, kind of upright deadwood, would be have a drier environment and they support a different kind of range of of species. But why is it important is that there's

Forests and woodlands are full of specialist species that only they don't many of the invertebrates would not live in living timber. They live in dead timber. And they're part of a chain. they're part of a chain, a food chain, if you like. So if you provide habitat for invertebrates that can live under the bark of dead trees or in holes or bore holes in dead trees, they become a food source for a range of bird species then as well. And and then within the within the f the

that that's a further kind of points on the chain where you would have raptors, you know, that are feeding off small birds and so on. And then there's the whole fungal world as well. And which are enriching they themselves are providing nutrient back into the forest for the trees to develop and to grow as well. So if you I don't I don't have the scientific facts on this, but there's plenty of there's plenty of research done showing that, you know, if you if you you can provide dead wood in the forest it

is enhancing to biodiversity and to the growth of the forest without being a cost to I suppose on the economic side. So w we it's something that I would never have done initially. And I suppose that when I started managing forests everything was harvested and everything was taken out of the wood. But I was amazed when I started leaving snags and deadwood how you'd come back and you'd find woodpecker holes in them or, you know,

a whole range of kind of burrowing insects and the whole everything around that. It's incredible. And and you don't need to leave very much for to create a to have a big effect. And it is amazing how how you can actually a small management intervention like that can make a big difference. Yeah, so we've actually found that we can target, we can create deadwood as you described by ring barking trees and that tar why

speaker-1 (33:03.522)
in the thinning or the marking process, we would select trees for ring barking that would be really difficult for harvesting, that wouldn't generate a good price anyway, even if we did harvest them, because they're very rough, they're kind of what we call wolf trees or that are going to cause a lot of impact if you take them down by, you know, there might be we might want to mark them and take them out of the wood because they're impacting on a good quality tree. But by doing so in the felling process we would damage the quality tree that we

that is beside them and that we're trying to favor. So the best thing to do is actually to to ring bark those and leave them in situ. That's a perfectly l legitimate way of thinning your wood. Effectively are affecting the thinning and you'll get a double bonus because you've improved the tree you want to improve. And at the same time you've created a deadwood habitat as well. And the only the other thing about deadwood is the larger the tree that is retained for deadwood, the more

longevity it has because it'll stay standing for longer. I mean a small tree which is kind of self thinned and a little stick, which may be not even reaching the canopy, that's not going to have a huge value. Does the actual surface area wouldn't be great. And it'll probably fall down in a couple of years anyway. But if you can find a large tree which you would naturally want to take out in the thinning process, which has the potential to be a deadwood for maybe twenty, twenty five years, that is where the real value is in deadwood.

And so a large dimension deadwood is is significantly more value and valuable and that's recognised in a lot of the kind of the, I suppose, best practice guidelines now in terms of how you we use deadwood. And i in Ireland we've got a fantastic opportunity in in in adversity, if you like, because ash dieback has been is a terrible, I suppose, addition to the the many challenges we've had in forestry. But it is when you have hedgehro hedgerow trees,

ash trees in your forest which are have got ash dry back, they tend to be quite large dimension and they are as your forest grows up in the fields that you planted either side of the hedgerows, these ash trees which are dying, they are actually providing they could be or are providing fantastic deadwood habitat as well. And they you're kind of incorporating those into your forest management. And so there is a value in them, maybe it's not a commercial value, but it's a value kind of a longer term value to your forest in those

speaker-0 (35:26.252)
Yeah, well, this is what is often referred to the the range of ecosystem services that forest owners are often providing with by just simple management interventions, even if they have commercial objectives. Patty, what we're gonna do now is we're gonna come back to my imaginary woodland here in Monaghan. It's an oak woodland, a monoculture. And we talked about the first thinning where and we'll talk about the woodland improvement scheme, but the first thinning effectively puts in

thinning rack, which makes the access to the woodland much easier. But there is a way that owners can put in an inspection path and they can be doing some formative shaping prior to any large intervention with machinery. So maybe just get you to explain the idea of of formative shaping and whether or not an inspection path can be a good thing for an owner who's very engaged in their woodland.

speaker-1 (36:22.892)
Yeah, well in inspection paths are are very valuable ways of getting through the wood. I mean, what effectively what it is is you could you're creating a a little tunnel, if you like, through the wood before it's been thinned. It can be done with a handsaw that's kind of labor intensive or with a chainsaw. You want to be careful when using the chainsaw. Well, apart from all the safety issues, that you don't damage the bark of you know, that you're only cutting branches, you're not cutting you're not skinning.

this side of the tree or the edge of the or the or taking bark off the tree. By creating this kind of network of paths through the wood, it's a f it's like it like it's like as is described just you can go around and you can see first of all, it's it's probably a quite therapeutic thing to do. But apart from that, it's gets you around the wood. It it in a I mean for those people engaged in their woods, they would have when when the wood was planted, they would have been walking until such time as

if they found it too difficult to walk, with the priors and side branches and so on stopping their way. But it's a way of reopening the wood for themselves that they can get back in under the canopy before it's thinned by pr pruning side branches on, you know, if you go down a row, you can the side branches of one side and and off the other side to create this little tunnel. So and you can you can use it to navigate your way wherever you want to go in in the forest and it's it's

and then on the formative the formative shaping is really something that's done before the canopy be like a year four or five in broadleaves where, you know, I described it earlier where, you know, you have an opportunity. I mean, you can't make a silk purse out of a sous ear, but you can certainly, you know, a tree which maybe is looking good as strong str strong growth, but maybe has developed two leaders, you can nip off one of the leaders or one which has kind of cr developed a Y shape.

you know, again with two liters or one, not quite clear which is the leader and you can take you can select one out and allow one to to grow on it to develop on. And that kind of work, it can just improve the number of trees that you have options on for future management. You're probably not, you know, your A trees, your let's call them A A plus trees. you probably can't create an A plus tree. They're probably genetically just going to always be straight.

speaker-1 (38:44.408)
But you can certainly make an an A minus tree out of a maybe a B or C quality. And as I say, don't waste your time on on absolute bushes which are never going to be a quality tree. They have other functions in the wood. They don't they're not going to be a quality tree, but they might provide another function.

speaker-0 (39:01.928)
It's it's just a matter of walking through and making the odd judicious selection and moving on. You've two and a half thousand trees in a in a hectare and you don't want to take too much off one tree, I guess, and and just be happy with your choice. Don't procrastinate too much. Just get in, enjoy it and and take a little bit.

speaker-1 (39:21.354)
Yeah. I mean I know I know owners many of owners just find it a very therapeutic thing to do, is to actually go in and and do that. And you know, lots of us have stressful jobs and I don't but lots of people do and when they come home in the evening to go out with the secretaries and snip away, it can be a way of I suppose I suppose, releasing the worries of the world. Yeah.

speaker-0 (39:44.664)
We we we should be charging people to come into our woodlands, close these gyms and Pilates Studios Patty and charge them to come in and do a bit of work in our in our forests. There's one other topic that we'll touch briefly on before we move into the practicalities of making a woodland improvement scheme application and carrying it out. And that's coppicing. Now we could spend a week talking about coppassing, but in the context of formative shaping, sometimes you have

an aspiration to manage long term through COPAS or you have a very poor stem and coppice cutting out or stumping it back to a very low level, stumping this young tree back to a low level, it allows it to re-sprout up. Can you just explain that? Because it's a specific technique and it does require, I guess, a little bit of long term commitment to make that work. Why would someone do it and what will it achieve?

speaker-1 (40:40.056)
First of all, I'm not an expert on copsing, but I I do understand its uses and and it is something that can be used as a management tool. So why why would you do it? There's there's different reasons why you would do it. the first one is, and I mentioned, you know, you might you might have very poor quality trees from a timber point of view, but what you have developed is a really strong rootstock. And for various reasons, maybe animal trespass damage or frost or something like that, you might

The tree mightn't the the actual the tree itself or the stem may have misformed or developed into quite bushly or something like that. And you can use coppicing as a tool, what we would call stumping back, where you cut it right back and it'll grow again from the stump. Now, not all species are able to do this, but typically, you know, oak and hazel would be the main coppicing species. And but other species will coppice as well. And you can grow it from the stump.

But you need to return to that tree after a few years and single out if your purpose is to grow a quality stem from that, you need to single out your the the the st the the best stem or the stem you want to select. That's one reason for doing it. But the other reason for doing it is for coppicing itself, there's a whole range of forest products that come from coppicing, small dimension products which are used for traditional crafts or for things like, you know, handles.

dual handles, wattling, charcoal production. Or uses for coppiced timber. And if you i by by creating a multi stemmed tree through coppicing, you can develop those products or develop yeah, d develop those products on a short term basis or on a rotation, short term rotation basis with a kind of a a regime where you

you you you cut to a stump and it regrows and then you c return for periodic harvesting. Then that that the period would depend on the type of product you're trying to produce, but it would also depend on on the growth rate within the fo the wood the productivity in the species. But I mean people would see coppice products on a r on a regular basis, for example, kind of chestnut paling, kind of fencing, those where which is made of split chestnut.

speaker-1 (43:07.34)
oak can be used for the same purpose, those kind of things. And potentially, you know, with with the right kind of input, kind of labour inputs. And th those are all readily commercial commercial products in their own right. there's a lot of labor involved, but they're n they're they're nice things. and there's a tr there's a tradition in them as well, which is nice to retain. And a lot of forest owners would would pursue that that option for that reason. You know, they're trying maintaining a tradition and they're

And then from a biodiversity point of view, it's also a very good way of quickly developing the understory in the woodland because you can maintain certain trees as canopy trees and then the coccus trees become the understory trees we talked about earlier, which are so important from stability and from a biodiversity development point of view, because you've got this mid story, which is a potential host for a whole other range of species than that would live in the insulation of a mid story that's not available in a story.

Canopy, forest canopy. Perfect.

speaker-0 (44:08.3)
Okay. Well, look at we have good options there as to how and why we might intervene in our forests. We'll talk now about the woodland improvement scheme, and that's the grant scheme that the Irish government make available to forest owners who are broadleaf woodlands and who want to make an intervention. Now, you know, we've we've talked through what that might actually look like putting in a thinning rack and selecting trees and doing some of the practical things we talked about.

But I suppose a a key thing an owner who's listening might be interested in is at what age can they actually apply for this grant and yeah, or how big do the trees need to be, I guess.

speaker-1 (44:49.986)
You apply at the effectively at first thinning stage. this is for conventional kind of the woodland improvement scheme, there's two elements to it. There's one which is for broadleaf thinning, and then there's also a continuous cover forestry element to it as well, which I I can talk about separately. But for the broadleaf thinning one, it's really when at at a stage when you are doing your first thinning intervention. So it that depends on the productivity of your site, but it could be anywhere between

kind of age with broadleaves that tend to be age between somewhere between fifteen and twenty years of age for the first intervention. And then you get a second bite then because you're you can you're allowed to apply for a second broadleaf thinning grant for the second thinning, which might be, you know, would normally be maybe eight, seven, eight, nine, ten years after your first intervention. Okay. It wouldn't be on a it would tend not to be on a five year thin the colour for thinning would be on a four or five

maybe a six year cycle. But because broadleaves are growing slower, they would tend to be on a slightly wider cycle. So, you know, six, seven, eight, nine, ten years out in after after the first intervention. So those grants are available to to support that. And the application process is is is actually relatively simple because it's a grant. It's not it's not a license. So you're not getting a it doesn't have to go through the same, you know, procedure as if you were applying for a felling license. Now you do need a felling license.

separately, but you you don't it's not it's not like applying for a felling license or a a forestation license or a road license. it's a straightforward grant situation. So they're normally actually in fairness the Forest Service th those applications are normally quite quick to turn around, both at the Form one stage when you're applying and also at the form two stage when you're you know you're applying for the money, I s I guess. But you do have to do the work first and you get the money retrospectively.

speaker-0 (46:47.852)
Yeah, and I suppose, Patty, just to put it in context, the the reality is is that intervening in a broadleaf woodland, especially young broadleaf woodlands, is a non-commercial activity in that it it it rarely makes an awful lot of money for the owner. And so the combination of the grant that's paid by the government and the combination of that with the bit of timber that's harvested.

You're hoping that that will cover your your your cost of intervention. Isn't that the aspiration?

speaker-1 (47:18.478)
Exactly, yeah. I mean the whole reason the grant is there because the it's very, very difficult for the operation to wash its face without support. And the support is there to allow the intervention to happen and for not to cost and not to be a burden or a cost on the owner or the forester or so everybody should be able to get through the operation with the support of the grant and get paid, including the owner, you know, and that might be in retained timber for their own

firewood use or something or it might be a a a a cash payment. But it just depends on the so much on the stage, the species, the scale, and so you know, where where that balance lies. But this the grant is there to support the whole operation. I don't think we'd be doing a lot of broadly thinning without the grant. so it is a very welcome scheme that the department operates.

speaker-0 (48:11.65)
Yeah, and as you say, you get if you're and I mean the woodland improvement scheme has existed for for decades now, I think, certainly as long as I'm involved in forestry. And so some owners may have already availed off that that support once or twice to do what we've talked about. They they've put in a thinning rack, they're doing a little bit of high pruning where they're shaving some of the low branches of the best trees in the forest.

And then they're selecting and working with giving space to some of these great potential high value trees. So they may have done that process twice and they they're left with, I suppose, two options. They can grow that wood onwards for a clearfeld situation and I'll get you to talk about how that might work. Or many owners are now looking towards Pro Silva and that continuous cover model as well. And maybe you'd

Talk about then that option as a follow on for someone who's who's done some basic interventions in their woodland.

speaker-1 (49:15.542)
Yeah, so the continuous lower option is just really just an ongoing thinning of the of the wood, continually trying to improve the quality of what's been retained and to create opportunities as time develops for the regeneration of the wood and the d structural development of the wood and the res development of the resilience of the wood. so I suppose there is a fundamental difference in at some point not

really at first thinning or even some maybe at second thinning, but where in your approach to marking or your selection of trees, and generally it's around retaining small trees. typically in a conventional thinning where you're growing your trees towards a in a single rotation to w a single date of of maturity, you're you tend to be homogenizing the your your trees in the wood and trying to create everything

to a similar size that they would all mature at the same time. whereas with continuous cover management, once you've done your initial crown development, you're always looking for opportunities for to diversify the tree size range. So you would have tr some trees which are very advanced or become quite advanced with their crown development and the the stem development. And then you may may have other slow burners, which are still of high quality, but they might be growing much slower.

But you're trying to retain those in the system because they would in the long term, the very, very long term, they would also reach a maturity date, which would be much further out than the the faster growing trees. So you're trying to retain this mix and also then you're trying to retain you're trying to at a certain point along the way regeneration will start to happen in the wood and you're trying to get that regeneration to catch up, if you like, or to to join the the conveyor of

tree sizes going through the system. So you're you you you have your fast growing or your you know trees which and then you've got slower grown grown ones of the same generation. But then you've got a new generation of trees which are you want to catch up as well or not necessarily catch up, but they want them to join the the long term production cycle as well. So and that is that's what structure is effectively is when you've got trees, seedlings, saplings

speaker-1 (51:40.702)
pole stage and mature trees all in the same system. And so that that would be the big difference there. And on the grant side of things, the woodland improvement scheme has, as I said, this continuous cover forestry element. The grant is the same as the as for the the conventional broadleaf thinning grant is 1200 euro per hectare. But there's a third payment under the CCF scheme, which

the C CF scheme is a twelve year has a t twelve year lifespan. So you're kind of expected well, you draw up your own bespoke plan for your in conjunction with your forester for your own wood. And so it includes lots of things, not just the thing, including pruning, maybe maybe some underplanting. And this scheme that scheme is not just available for broadleaves, it's also available for us. But might include deer management, it might include other things that you you need to do.

you know, like protecting young trees with tubes and so on. But anyway, that's a twelve year scheme. So you're expected to probably have three thinning interventions in that time. So you would that would, you know, carry you a little bit further into the process than the conventional first thinning, second thinning, broadleaf thin grant would do.

speaker-0 (53:00.856)
Am I right in saying, Patty, that if I have let's say I was one of those very early owners who planted in the nineteen eighties or early nineties and I've already gotten two bites at the woodland improvement scheme, can I now as a a further process, can I apply under the continuous cover forestry scheme and and bring my woodland on in that sense, or are you restricted from accessing the C C F version if you've already got two bites at the other cherry?

speaker-1 (53:31.496)
no, you're you can join the C C F scheme, but you won't get the three grants. the three payments, you'll only get the the final payment. so similarly if you've had if you've availed of the the broadleaf thinning grant for one thinning and you join the C C F element, you can get two further payments. You can't get more than three payments through the Woodland Improvement Scheme.

speaker-0 (53:53.962)
I like to bring some of this back to economics, Patty, because as someone who's looked at the economics of broadleaves, it can be challenging. And one of the temptations of a Clearfeld model is that you you bring in a sudden lump of cash in one fell swoop. But can you speak to the cost of replanting, restocking that broadleaf woodland that you've clearfelled versus the idea of taking a slower, steady

revenue stream from a continuous cover forest over a prolonged period.

speaker-1 (54:29.25)
Yeah. I suppose in the general kind of concept is, you know, that when you're growing broadleaves, you're developing an asset and it's a slow growing kind of asset which can become valuable over a long period of time. But if you t if you clearfeld that asset, it's liquid liquidated. You whatever cash you get out of it, you have to reinvest and you have to start rebuilding that asset. And it'll be a long time, probably fifteen, twenty years before you can start

to generate income from it again. And the incomes are on early thinnings, as we know, are challenging. It's small, dependent on grant support and so on. So the the idea of the continuous cover forest management is that that asset is retained and you draw the interest off off of it. So let's say you have, you know, you're developing a capital asset in a in a woodland and it's growing every year and your interventions, your thinning interventions are effectively

the interest on the f capital value of that asset. And so there's no one single point where the incomes are incredibly exciting because they're low volume and they're spread maybe six, seven, eight years apart. But you are improving the value with every attending that you do, you've improving the value of what you leave behind. So the capital value is increasing and you're getting small levels of interim income from it. I suppose the the the

some forest owners are lucky that they with the development and the retention and the the I suppose a natural development of the woodland over time, that those assets are seen as valuable for from other perspectives and they're able to they're they're able to, I suppose, get value out of them for other reasons, whether it's just for their own enjoyment, but often it's other monetary things. You know, you've got people coming in, you could have a film, you know, in Wicklow we're lucky we've got

they're used as backdrops for films as film locations where we can charge a fee or the owners charge a fee for that. they use you know for you you could have other immunities coming into the wood, like lamping and those kind of things as well. So those are all additional opportunities that come that accrue with the development of a of a woodland as well. And if you lick if you if you get rid of the woodland, those opportunities disappear and you're back to square one again. Yeah.

speaker-0 (56:54.83)
Patty, there's one aspect, again, each of these different schemes, there can be quite a lot to them. And the CCF has a huge range of options that someone who's developing their broadleaf can avail off. But one specific one I think is it's worth mentioning is the idea of enrichment planting. And that allows us to consider the idea of bringing in some conifers into what was previously a broadleaf woodland to

give the owner a new range because certainly we can allow some of the native species to regenerate, but as well as that, the idea of enrichment planting can be something that someone might consider. If let's be honest, some of the species that were planted, say a sycamore or as you say, ash, some of these species, it you can struggle to get them, you can they can struggle to reach a high income value in a in a l long enough period. So the

Talk about that enrichment planting and maybe one or two things you've tried in some of the woodlands that you're working with.

speaker-1 (57:58.742)
Yeah. So in Richmond planting is one of the most common things to being used as a in the woodland under the woodland improvement scheme or using the funding from woodland improvement scheme. And it very much comes down to the forest owners' objectives and what what they want to achieve. In many cases, we're just simply trying to establish an understory and f that's to h to I suppose fast track or to assist the structural development of the wood.

So it's about resilience to silvicultural reasons. You know, in in the case of oak, for example, oak woodlands were maybe trying to develop an understory to keep all the work we've done on developing stems and kind of selecting good quality stems, we then wanted to keep those stems clean. So would you be using hazel or beech, which are shade tolerant species, which you can underplant, to grow as an understory and shade the the stems to keep them clean, stop the side branching, developing.

Right economic branch development. So that's one example of, you know, circumstances for underplanting. But in lots lots of lots of situations it's an enchant and the reason it's called enrichment planting is because generally we're using a diverse range of species to diversify probably was established as a monoculture. So you go to pure oak, pure ash, pure you mentioned sycamore, stand, and it's probably unlikely to

in the short term start developing kind of a a very diverse kind of understory. And it's an opportunity to bring diversity in that's not available locally, you know, from natural regeneration or natural seed being development. And conifers can be brought in as part of that. It's it's all down to the forest managers objective or forest forest owners' objectives. But you do need to be careful with underplanting that they are I mean there's a fundamental principle in forestry which

matching the species at the site, or as people like to say, the right tree in the right place, but it's matching the species to the site. So the tre the tree has to be suitable for the site, but it also has to be suitable for underplanting. And some trees are very light demanding and just simply won't grow under a canopy or even in a half canopy. They need full light. And so you need to be in your species selection, you're kind of restricted to with underplanting to trees which are

speaker-1 (01:00:23.448)
sh what we call shade tolerant. So I mentioned a few like beech and hazel, one beam would be another. Holly comes naturally shade tolerant. But on the conifer side, you things like cedar and hemlock, which can be used. And we I would use cedar a lot. A European silva fir is another one, which is very shade tolerant and then can be used in under planting and in rich planting as as well. So we do same across whether it's broadleaves and in conifer stands as well, those kind of circumstances.

And there is a very useful range of booklets pr produced by Presilva Ireland on different kind of stages of woodland management. And there is one particular one on underplanting, which I think is really, really useful and gives a list of species that are shade tolerant and can be used for that are typically used for underplanting and what particular what objectives they might serve.

speaker-0 (01:01:15.084)
Yeah, and I'd I'd I'd I'd echo that, Patty. There's a great resource there at Pro Silva and the field days are excellent. I've I've been to very many of them and you learn a lot and you meet other owners and farse professionals. So you she get a great insight. Patty, we we're finished with that now and I I want now to talk about the finish off by talking about maybe the historical context of where Irish hardwares were growing and what we were growing and and what was our

predominant timber in the past because that's something now that with nature restoration and with an awareness of trying to get back to a more natural landscape that that's happening. Maybe you'd speak a little bit about oak and its role in in Irish forestry and and maybe w where it can go in the future.

speaker-1 (01:02:01.292)
If you talk to any kind of or run any poll on what kind of woodlands people want, they want native Irish forests. And there's no surprise. So what is what has been happening is a slow rebuilding of that resource. through, you know, first of all, the protection of the areas that we do have, that we did retain, through the new planting programmes, through the initially the five percent, now that you know the twenty percent broadleaves that are going into existing

or to new forestry plantations and into the replacement of when conifer crops are clear fellow into the replacement forests that go in after those. And those the forest owners who decided from the very start that they would plant broadleaves, they would plant, you know, native woodlands. So that resource is growing and it's incumbent on us as foresters in the forestry sector and forest owners to manage that. And it's a slow burner, but that is going to be the core of the forestry culture develop re

development of forestry culture. And, you know, I've been running stats looking at the stats from the National Forest Inventory. it is happening slowly that we are developing an Irish hardwood resource. And when we develop the resources I said earlier, small little industries will develop around it. And we just had to be so careful that this time round we we manage it sustainably. And I think there all the the checks and balances are there. Maybe

With the Forest Service and the regulation reg as the regulator, maybe we complain a lot about over regulation in forestry. But if when you consider the history that we had of exploitation, you can understand a little bit why it is it is so heavily regulated. but yeah, I would say, you know, again, coming back to the what I was said, like for thousands of years, oak was our main commercial species. In the last hundred years it hasn't been. But I would say

there it is highly likely that it will become our main commercial species again. And this the area we're living in will be seen in the fullness of time by history, will be seen as a a short term not a blip, but a short term phase that we had to go through where we had to rely on other species to supply our timber, while we fixed the long term issue that we that we had exploited.

speaker-0 (01:04:19.778)
Yeah, no, it's a nice thought. And I I think I've been surprised you know, they say you need to match the tree to the site, but oak can grow in some some fairly heavy ground and in in fairly remote and inaccessible places and and in places where it you wouldn't imagine they they may not grow into the thirty meter monsters that we might see in in Glendaloch or whatever, but they they they can really grow into fine specimens in their own right. and it's wonderful.

to as an owner to know that you're even if you're only managing a couple of woods for the very long a couple of oak trees in your own forest for the very long term, it's it's a lovely thought to be leaving that behind you. Patty, thanks very much for joining me. This has been a great chat.

speaker-1 (01:05:05.986)
No problem. Always enjoy chatting about forestry in general.

speaker-0 (01:05:09.282)
Many thanks, Patty. Talk to you soon.

Thanks again to Patty Purser for joining me and for sharing his expertise. Links to everything we discussed in the podcast can be found in the show notes, where you'll also find ways you can get in touch with Patty or indeed myself. Thanks for listening and chat soon.