Forestry Now

[gentle music] 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 Joe Gerren from Woodlands of Ireland about our native forests. Joe has a deep understanding of the history, ecology, and management of these woodlands, and so we touch on all of this. Then we discuss positive initiatives to expand and protect these woodlands, as well as regulatory hurdles and contradictions that are preventing more progress. Lastly, Joe gives me an overview of the training initiatives Woodlands of Ireland are involved in to improve forestry education for the future. Links in the show notes below, and I hope you find the conversation useful.

Joe, thanks for joining me. Maybe you'd explain the, the remit of Woodlands of Ireland, please.

Yeah. So, uh, Woodlands of Ireland is a, a, a charity, not for profit, established in 1998. The aims and objectives remained the same from the beginning, namely to native woodland conservation, uh, the expansion of native woodland as well.

Maybe we'd move on to talk about something which is quite obvious to yourself. Why is native woodland so important then, and what are the ecosystem services that our existing native woodlands are actually delivering for us?

So in the c- native woodland scheme you have, now you have six scenarios, and they d- more or less describe th- those different naturally occurring woodland types that have evolved since the last ice age. So it's not just the trees, it's the microorganisms in the soil, things that grow on the trees, the bryophytes, the lichens. It's the, it's the mammals that, um, are, are associated with these woodland types. Of course, bird species and, um, insects. Beetles, for example, there's, there's particular beetles that only live in certain types of woodland. And some of our other habitat types that are similar to woodland, like your hedges and other wooded lands that are, you know, below the threshold of forest, they actually contain some of the species that are, are, are relics of ancient woodland, potentially. So

th- the, the remaining native woodland that we have, even though there's been a lot of disturbance and we've, uh, we, you know, we have, uh, a lot of introduced species in there, invasive species and so forth, but still you've got, uh, essentially the remnants from that evolution, you know, where species have co-evolved together.

Are they good at locking up carbon, Joe? Is that a fair assumption?

They're reasonable at locking up carbon, but the, the bigger store is in the soil itself, in undisturbed soil built up over time. So, so that's... This is where whatever way it's managed to be as low impact as possible in terms of disturbance of the soil. So

this is why silviculture systems with that would be within continuous cover forestry would be the way to, to approach it.

Is it a safe bet to assume that the older the woodland, the richer it is ecologically? Is that a fair assumption?

In theory, yes. I'll give you an example.

So t-take one of the famous English woodland ecologists, Oliver Rackham. So, so, so there's this

big series of books called The New Naturalist series, and it's on different topics. He's doing the one on woodland. So it's a big, you know, 500-page book, and he gets to page two, and he's immediately talking about coppicing and, uh, coppice silviculture and the benefit that that has, uh, ecologically, because with the cyclical cropping, and also you're creating conditions for natural regeneration as well, but it's cyclical cropping. And you also get a response from, from, uh, ground flora. And so you get, you get these sort of temporary niches opening up. And then, uh, so if there's a pattern across a woodland o-of plots being cropped, it... You get a movement of species around as well. So that creates much more structural and species diversity. So that's what you're looking for in your woodland. For example, if somebody puts in a new native woodland establishment, they... Okay, it passes year four, and then they do nothing. Yes, it'll grow into, into an even-aged stand, but basically it'll still be a plantation. It's only when you, you go and you thin that, you, you start to get natural regeneration and, and then you continue to, uh, recruit that natural regeneration into the canopy. That sort of process and the little bit of disturbance that you're causing every time you, you, you cut and extract, that's actually providing new niches for species to come in.

So in that sense, if it's being managed carefully, that you're gonna get the diversity, more likely to get the diversity of ground flora and different mammals than you would in a, a high single-aged, uh, crop that hasn't been touched in, in 30 or 40 years.

Yes.

Just to historically look back, forest cover fell in Ireland. By the 1900s it was, it was down to 1, 1.5%, it seems. But there's a common thing said in Ireland that the British came and they took all our timber, but that's not entirely fair if we look at what the Neolithic farmers were doing. So wh-who, who took our woodlands, Joe, and where did they go?

Cattle were, uh, such a significant part. They were the currency in medieval Ireland right up to well into the 1600s.

For example, there's a, there's a book by A. T. Lucas called Cattle in Ancient Ireland. She talks about one particular cattle raid fr- the O'Donnells to- went to County Clare. They scooped up 2,000 head of cattle and then just distributed them to

various people that they had a lien on in North Connacht and into, into South Donegal, who would then, if they gave them six cattle, they'd have to provide them with one cow as rent per annum.From that. That, that requires quite an open landscape to operate with herds of that size, but also being able to move that freely across the landscape, you know, on horseback. Uh, but having said that, there would still be areas that are predominantly wooded, so the... There are various estimates, up to 1600s there may well have been, um, uh, similar to what we have now, around 12%, uh, forest cover. Now, when, when the, um, plantations occurred, to say the Cromwellian era, during that century there was a lot of exploitation in a kind of colonial fashion

of oak for barrel making and ship building as well as the, uh, the British Navy expanded its power. And then the charcoal making here was quite often exploitative in the sense that

unlike in a, a lot of areas in England in particular were protected to coppice. Once the land acts came in, the tenants who acquired land could actually fell timber

to p- get money to pay the mortgage on the land. Plus landlords who had to compulsorily sell land, they would also remove the best of tree cover. So a lot of the ancient and long-established woodland, as we're calling it now, was gutted for the best timber and the best trees. And also, don't forget World War I [laughs] and timber needed for the trenches. So you were really at rock bottom by the time the, the, the state, uh, came into being.

What has happened to the remaining pockets of native woodland since the foundation of the state?

So the state forestry would acquire land that was no- not suitable for agriculture, so it was in the kind of extreme, uh, mountainous situations and boggy situations that you were developing the, the state forestry. A lot of ancient and long-established woodland was cut over and restocked with spruce. When I came in to work in forestry in the late 1980s, uh, early 1990s, the main grand scheme was called scrub clearance and forestation. The idea there was that you could clear what was called scrub. We use inverted commas on the scrub. I realized that what they were clearing was naturally occurring woodland types that were in, in the process of... There was plant succession was occurring from, from land that had been managed in agriculture that was reverting back to woodland, and that was at a quite an advanced stage of reversion. You know, they could be maybe 50 to 100 years old, uh, in, in, from, from pre- previously being rough grazing.

So you could get a grant to bulldoze that out, or you could get a grant to fell that, and the idea was to chemically kill off non-commercial native species, which is pretty much most of them. So you get a grant for that, and then ideally you'd restock with spruce. When the Convention of Biological Diversity came in in 1992 and the government signed up to it, and then they actually ratified Ireland's agreement with that in 1996, it meant then that any of the schemes technically couldn't reduce the biological diversity. You couldn't pay out money, state money, to re- to reduce biological diversity on, on a site, particularly forest sites.

What are the greatest other ongoing threats to native woodland then? Well, maybe you just list them briefly.

Deer

is really high on the list there, probably top, because the expanded deer population are getting in and browsing a- any natural regeneration. So it's a huge issue in, in, I would say, most of your native and semi-native woodland has this issue.

Then your invasive species are next, rhododendron being the worst. Laurel next. Naturalized species, not, but, but, that, that are not considered to be, uh, native, the beech and sycamore, which have been introduced maybe in Norman and the, um, the, uh, 16th, 17th century,

are heavy shaders and they can outcompete the, your native species and become very dominant and, and it, it creates a different type of woodland.

Joe, is it a simplification, an oversimplification to say that if the existing and some of the older native woodlands that were, that, that have been in existence in more than 30 or 40 years, that if there was a way for those there in ecosystem, payments for ecosystem services, that they would be looked after? Because at the minute, they're a valuable resource that can't be monetized effectively.

This is the thing about native woodland. It, it does need to be monitored, and, uh, it does need to be tweaked, and it needs to be attention paid, uh, regularly. Now, it's, that doesn't mean to say that you can't have areas where just little or nothing happens for decades. That can also be the case if there's nothing untoward happening in terms of invasive species. And by following timber, getting some timber utilization, you'll get the structural and species diversity that is gonna give it, give you, in general, a better outcome for, for biodiversity.

So what you're saying is there, uh, that it's not enough to pay for ecosystem services. There has to be a, a continual management for it to be of any benefit to the woodland itself.

Yeah. Active management is the way to think of it. The taxpayer who's paying the ecosystem services at least wants to know that, that the habitats are maintained in good condition. But, uh, I would see that, uh, equally in, in, in, uh, uh, with hedges and other woodlands, that the way to go is, is in a similar process that happened with native woodland in, in terms of the inventory, establishing what's ancient and long-established. And then developing management guidelines and grant schemes where, uh, also a premium is attached. So definitely payment for ecosystem services is the way to go. It-

Just jumping here to a slightly separate issue. You're working in native woodlands, uh, for most of your professional career. Is there a perception among the public that especially this low woodland or scrubby type of forests aren't really a woodland? That, that they're not a real native woodland and that there's low ecological benefit? Because that's the perception that you hear people when they look at certain lands, if it doesn't have a, a, a 20-meter oak in it, they think it's not really a woodland.

Yeah. So there's particular

types of scrub, um, y- you know, a blackthorn, for example, that might be growing on a very shallow, rocky, rocky ground that's... It never evolve into woodland.

Just the conditions are, are such that blackthorn will remain, uh, the predominant species.

But there are other species of, of, of birds and, and insects that this is prime habitat for them. We, we don't recognize, we don't appreciate.

It ties in with a lot of the state's, uh, performance has been to encourage new woodlands, but to spend very little to maintain, protect, and enhance what's already there, especially on the native level.

Well, um, you know, in the initial period, 2001 to 2008, that first forestry program with the native woodland conservation in it, there was uptake of something like 2,600 hectares into native woodland conservation. We had the, um, economic crash, and one of the first things to be cut was the native woodland conservation scheme. So with difficulty, it returned in 2015, [laughs] but applications that went in

quite often would take several years to be processed, and in fact, there was a backlog of applications. And that's partly why in the new forestry program, which is... I give credit to the Forest Service, it's progressive in terms of the amount of options that you have, al- although that can be confusing for landowners,

that the climate resilient reforestation is a very useful mechanism now to... as a standalone, uh, grant scheme, particularly with the windthrow situation that's occurred in the last year,

that it at least it's there as an option, which has a premium attached to it as well.

Although it's a... I think it's a seven-year premium, but it... at least it, it... There is an incentive to convert some conifer sites to native woodland with using that mechanism, and that's likely to be u- very useful for some of achieving the nature restoration law targets as well.

Let me ask you this then. You mentioned that there had been problems and a bit of a stop-start nature with the woodland conservation scheme. But would you be disappointed with the uptake at the minute?

Yes. With the stop-start nature, or since 2008, and, uh, as well, even when the scheme came back in 2015,

it has, uh, reduced the confidence of the foresters and the, and the ecologists in encouraging people to put in applications. One of the things that's improved is that they've digitized the applications. Up to the year before last, it was paper. The other thing that they've c- come out, that's come out now, uh, which is good in the, uh, midterm review, is that they've agreed to do pre-application discussion.

And this is important because landowners can meet the forester most likely on site and have a walk about and talk about how practical that scheme is for their particular woodland, how suitable it is.

With an inspector, Joe, is that right?

Yeah. And, and, and that should improve the likelihood of getting through the process faster to some extent.

Yeah. We have to recognize there has been some good things there. But, I mean, just really on the hard brass of it, am I right in saying that if I wanted to apply for the woodland conservation scheme, even if I was pretty sure that I, I would have a good chance, could you have the payment of the application fee, of the felling license, and pay an ecologist before you, you put in, uh, an application?

Yeah. It's one of the main factors that discourages applications is landowners knowing that they have to pay the forester and the ecologist for producing the ecological survey and management plan. We, we've made the case to the department to have that as a separate standalone, that, that there's a public good in actually having a report on the site, particularly a report that mirrors what was being produced in the National Survey of Native Woodlands. It's giving you that piece of data to the state,

and you've also got a management plan. Uh, so, so the issue of commencing that work would be a separate grant scheme. Now, we're not there yet with that, but we continue to argue to, to separate the two and so that the cash flow aspect, that there's quicker turnaround. But definitely what's helping with that is the digitization on the one hand, and now the pre-application discussion is going to really, really help that.

A final thanks to Paul Lafferty at forestsales.ie for his sponsorship of the podcast and for agreeing to be one of my earliest guests. Now, if you're interested in sponsoring the podcast, please do get in touch. Forestry Now has listeners in over 50 countries and is available on all the main podcast platforms. The podcast is promoted using short video clips on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, so I think you'll get bang for your advertising buck with me. Now, back to Joe Garro. We're talking here about forests that are down as small as one acre to five acres, six acres. We're talking about very small areas of ground, and I mean,

sometimes they're, they're, they're quite small, maybe sometimes larger, but it must take a lot of annual premium to pay back some of those upfront costs, even if you do get a- approval, Joe, does it?

Well, uh, the grant is, what is it, 6,000 euro per hectare, uh, for the actual grantSo it depends on w- what work needs to be done, um, in, in, in terms... That grant includes the cost of the ecological survey management plan.

Ah, okay.

So you're gonna get reimbursed for that.

Here's the thing that I've noticed, that at times state policy seems to be in contradiction with itself, and this came up in one of your webinars recently. Declan Cook from Inland Fisheries discussed how we should essentially be planting native woodlands along rivers and streams to protect catchments from runoff and to provide shading for the water during hot periods in the summer. And yet on the other hand, Irish forestry policy requires big setbacks from planting along waterways, even for native woodlands. So

I'm g- I, I can only estimate that there's probably thousands, uh, certainly hundreds of acres of land that could've been planted along rivers to protect rivers, that could've been planted with native woodland in the last 20 years that hasn't been planted, but that, that's a key example.

So what the, the fisheries are looking for is kind of an uneven edge with not a total canopy, uh, irregular canopy. The concern with the freshwater pearl mussel scientists is that if there's too much tree cover in the upper catchments, that it may reduce, in times of drought, the water levels to dangerous levels for the wa- the freshwater pearl mussel. On the other hand, the fisheries would like to see more tree cover in the upper catchments, at least enough to provide the, uh, material to, that improves conditions for salmon and trout to come and spawn.

So it's, it, it is complicated 'cause you, y- you'd have a mixture between Coillte and national parks, private landowners, Department of Agriculture with the Forest Service, and even EPA possibly in the mix there as well, trying to, uh, agree on, uh, what level of tree cover is scientifically and practically feasible there. But this 30-meter setback, I, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't consider Woodlands for Water measures for that, because could have applications, you know, that are only on average 30 meters wide that could go into that scheme.

Yeah.

So they, they... It seems like a-

A lost opportunity, in a way

... yeah, an easy, an, an easy thing to resolve.

Uh, Joe, uh, I, my observation on what I'm hearing, uh, speaking to other people, is that w- w- there's a scramble for land in Ireland at the minute really. I mean, you've got people that are actually, uh, wanting to expand farming operations, be it intensive or extensive farming operations. You've got people who have ambitions on maybe, uh, wind power or solar. You've also got forestry in that mix. And so we've got a, a pull and a tug on what can happen and where it can happen, and quite often th- who- whoever can pay the most i- is, is the winner in that sense. Um, one point is, is that the state brought in fairly strict regulations around new afforestation licenses to try and protect ecologically sensitive habitats. But

I'm being told, and I have experience of it, that native woodlands are being prevented from being planted in certain areas because there's some habitat there that might be, um, prioritized over the native woodland. And the, the, the net effect of refusing the afforestation license is often that that same land then falls into a more intensive use. Have you any thoughts on that or have you come across that?

I'm not, uh, aware of the going into more intensive use. Uh, but there are certain, a high nature value f- farming land that they, they're using a, a scoring system. If the land scores over a certain amount, then it precludes it from going into forestry, broadly speaking.

Yeah.

In some cases it could still be eligible for schemes like agroforestry. Then they have a kind of another threshold which might allow it to go to native woodland establishment as in f- predominantly conifer plantation. So there's different kind of steps on that. There are situations where forestry is completely excluded, even agroforestry, because of the quality of the, uh, grassland there that could be semi-natural grassland, you know, on unimproved land, you know, that hasn't been plowed and reseeded and so forth, bec- is becoming increasingly a more rarer habitat. The ground has been lost to forestry with that over the years.

But I don't know where the, uh, the balance is. A bit like in, in the, um, nature restoration, or they have estimates of how many square kilometers of particular oak woodland or wet woodland that there should be, how much there is, and how much there sh- the target area there should be, and then they've set legal targets of how much we need to achieve by certain dates. The same doesn't apply to my understanding with conservation of high species diversity grassland.

The next question around the afforestation issue was, was this, that there's a general rule in, in the Forestry Service that for any land to get, uh, afforestation funding, it must be capable of growing a yield class conifer 14 or higher, roughly, or, or the equivalent in, in broadleaf. So the department have a rule that if it's going to be grant aided, it has to be able to pr- uh, produce a productive commercial crop. But it seems to me that that's counterintuitive for native woodland, that like we've talked here about scrubland that could be very rich in biodiversity, it could be, um, helping to filter our water, but yet it may not be capable of growing a yield class conifer 14 or, uh, an equivalent in broadleaf. So-There's, there, there seems to be, um, uh, a view in the department that if it isn't capable of producing productive trees, commercial trees, then we shouldn't grant aid it at all, and that seems to prevent native woodland more than anything else from being planted in the first instance. And that's the, the question I have for you. I mean, can, can native woodland serve an ecological function or deliver ecosystem services even on relatively poor sh- poor soil, shallow soil, exposed soils?

So, so this is the, um, particularly to do with upland, you know, at, um, 300 meters, say, around there, that there is a restriction above a certain altitude, I think it's 100 to 200 meters. There was a presentation by Kevin Collins, Forest Service, um, and he got a question on this thing to do with the altitude and whether there would be any, uh, flexibility. So it looks like there will be some flexibility when it comes to, uh, more sheltered areas, you know, in, in, in gullies to, to expand that a, a bit so that the strict rule of where they had a cut-off at a certain altitude, it, it'll be on a case-by-case basis that you could go higher.

So we're likely to see a little bit of change there, especially where you can provide evidence that there was woodland there previously, formerly, and sometimes the evidence is actually in the name of the place. It, you know, if it's called, uh, Derry something or, or Quill, uh, something, it's, it's highly likely that there had been significant woodland across that townland in, in times past. So even though it might be degraded from... by being deforested and, uh, uh, and, you know, um, sort of wash-off of nutrients over long periods of time, still with, by using pioneer species like birch, you can build and improve soil structure and make it more conducive to good conditions for follow-on species like oak or Scots pine and other native species, uh, to gradually come in over time.

Yeah. It, it, it... There's a kind of a chicken and egg here. It's a restoration planting, uh, more, more so. It's the idea of, as you say, using pioneer species to maybe, um, improve the soil structure, and instead of seeing, um, a new forest in 10 or 15 years as you would on a lowland site, maybe it's gonna take 30 or 40 years, and maybe this is where the de- the department is still quite rigid in, in ba- basically wanting to see certain performance indicators reached that aren't maybe as relevant in those upland locations.

Yeah. And, and, and the other thing is the coastal areas. So you've got very exposed coastal areas now. If, if no, um, tree cover is established, then you don't have shelter. Now, if it is established, the, the initial tree cover could be very stunted and very, uh, um, shorn by the wind. But if, if more is then established behind that, gradually you get to build up... Okay, it'll be a bit of a curve from the edge with the, with the wind, but gradually, um, you'll get more shelter, and y- you'll get more productive tree cover, if you like, eventually, but you won't get it unless you actually start. So, so there has to be some sacrificial woodlands potentially to begin with to create a buffer to, to get... that can then protect further woodland. So-

Yeah

... so that's an aspect. The other thing is the, all the, all of the, um, protected tree cover, you know, on water courses and so forth, and remember that in the ancient and long-established woodland, that's protective tree cover for all the species that live there to create a refuge for them. So, so the protective aspect should, in many cases, override any concept of EU class considerations. But even if no EU class considerations apply to any native woodland, that doesn't preclude any timber utilization occurring over time or, you know, or producing very good quality sawlog of a range of different native species. But from a timber harvesting, uh, kind of a clear-felling scenario situation, it doesn't really make any sense. Shouldn't be a, um, compulsory aspect that determines whether the woodland actually commences at all.

Yeah. Agreed. I think, I think we're on the one, uh, wavelength on that one. Joe, finally then, we haven't got into what your main, uh, projects at Woodland of Ireland are at the minute. So, uh, we've talked on a lot of policy issues, but can you explain, um, your project that you're running at the minute, the Native and Semi-Natural Woodland Operative Skills Training Pilot? Maybe you could explain what that, uh, training pilot hopes to achieve and what the participants are learning.

Yeah. So we have, uh, eight, uh, participants on the, on the pilot, and it's mainly based at Enniscorth House, uh, Woodlands near Crossmolina, uh, County Mayo. W- what we're starting off is, uh, basic knowledge and basic skills. For example, we start on, uh, tree identification, and then seed collection that's available to us. Then we did a little bit of propagation of those, whether they could be seeded directly or they would, would be put into storage to stratify for, for, for use in the following year, for example, species like, uh, whithorn. Then we, we looked at boundary maintenance, uh, what type of, you know, into type, into fencing, but we also, we're also looking at, uh, traditional, um, craft elements of that, like, um, hedge laying. So we've done little sample bits of hedge laying on that estate. We had, uh, guest, uh, lecturers come in from Doolera, which is part of Farm Connemara,

and they concentrate on invasive species control.

So one of the elements we have in common with their staff is that two of our core modules are chainsaw safety training, which all of our trainees have passed their... Before Christmas, they did that module. That wa- It's a City & Guilds. Chainsaw Ireland provided the, the training. We, we, uh, used a site up near Ballinamore in, in County Leitrim. Uh, also, um, we're looking to do the safe use of pesticide, which is-Orientated towards

invasive species control specifically. We also had Sean O'Guithin, who's the head gardener for Glenveagh, come in and do a, um, a presentation about invasive species there, and also the deer, 'cause they have a b- a deer management situation and also invasive species. And also they have a lot of garden escapes, so, so some of the lesser known i-invasive species, ones that I, uh, a few of them I wasn't, wasn't familiar with. So we brought them t- and did some re-coppicing of a site that's been coppiced, uh, since 2001. So we recut, uh, one of those coupes, and they cut clean and grade the hazel, and we actually have market for pretty much everything that was cut.

Wow, okay.

Uh, some of it's going to, to Wexford, some of it's going to Armagh, and some is going to, uh, Roscommon. It's a small market for hazel rods and stakes, and some of the, the, the, we... At a later stage, we'll... I'll do some hazel hurdle making, the sheep hurdles, traditional sheep hurdles. We had a little pla- planting, uh, training exercise on different planting techniques

with different species, um, and we restocked two, uh, areas, copses in the parkland at Enniscorthy. This is a- this is within land that's leased by National Parks, and we re- we, uh, earlier had built a, a hedge bank on a, on a open boundary on a woodland where a line of sight for, um, road access had been widened, and the, the old hedge had been removed. So we created a, a new bank and restocked that. But in the parkland, what we're hoping to do is to completely,

uh, fence it with, uh, cleft oak, uh, from the woodland there. So we're also, with that, with the oak in this original plantation, 19- in, uh, 19, uh, 90 it was planted. There's some leaning trees, and there's the trees on the ground.

We're going to have a horse ex- timber extraction with horse demonstration there probably in June. It'll just be a demo, just to give them the flavor of that. We'd hope to go on a visit to John Sherlock as well to do his, his sawmill. And you've, you've, you've had him on your podcast, I think, before.

That's right. Yeah, yeah. Great-

Yeah

... great man to talk to.

Yeah, absolutely. Just to bring in those timber utilization aspects as well, to demonstrate the use of some of the oak as small dimension hardwoods, but that, that's the size of what's available to us from, from a bit of active management there.

That's a great initiative yous are involved in. And then maybe you could give us an insight into some of the strongest themes and some of the strongest actions that you're gonna be recommending from your consultation to develop a new native woodland strategy.

Part in the process of developing the strategy is I'm pushing for the development of a forestry education and training strategy. Hopefully there's a silviculture apprenticeship emerges out of this, that the newer concepts, if you like, that are coming in with continuous cover forestry are embedded into the curriculum, whether it's an apprenticeship or whether it's the colleges. The other thing is preparing to achieve the targets of the nature restoration law, the woodland targets. We're trying to identify for us in Woodlands Ireland what our role would be in assisting in achieving those targets. Now, some of it is, is got to do with the technicality of how, uh, physically how it's going to be achieved. You know, if they identify sites, how is the woodland going to be established? And as I'd mentioned earlier about the use of pioneer species and going through the process of succession, rather than thinking that if it's going to be an annexe oak type woodland, that it has to be predominantly oak on day one. More that if it's going to be mainly pioneer species with small proportions of oak and other associated species you get in an oak woodland, that that'll be much easier for the nurseries to deliver. It's much easier to produce, you know, millions of birch in a short period of time relatively than it is to produce that volume of oak. It'll take the pressure off if those sort of technical decisions are made and, and are actually going into the plan. The other aspect is workforce and long-term planning in terms of intergenerationally, how it is going to be managed, and that, that you have a cohort of people that are trained to, uh, maintain those woodlands in, you know, and, and deliver [laughs] particularly those targets. But also, for example, contractors have difficulty finding staff that are skilled staff to go in.

Yeah, very good. Okay, Joe. Well, lookit, we've covered a lot of ground there. Thanks for making the time.

Yeah. No, thanks, Dermot.

Thanks to Joe and to you, the listener, for taking the time to be here. If you've any suggestions, topics, or guests, please get in touch at forestryknowpodcast@gmail.com to let me know. Bye for now.

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