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collbradán

@collbradan

31 Dec 20

within 12 years, Scotland plans to create around 10 Glasgows-worth of new 'woodland', primarily through tree planting.

what if i told you that this could not only be done, but done better, *without* planting a single tree?

thread:

firstly, trees have managed to successfully plant themselves for at least 385 million years. they're actually really good at it! if they weren't, they'd not have made it back to Scotland after the last ice age.

we call trees planting themselves 'natural regeneration'

natural regeneration is the reason most ancient woods in the Highlands exist - they're made up of *wild trees*, descendants of those that recolonised Scotland after the ice age.

wild trees are generally more variable than planted ones (both genetically and in form):

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collbradán

@collbradan

18 Oct 20

1) for the last 60 years, we've been funding a campaign to exterminate Europe's wildlife. through the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), hundreds of billions of euros of public money have been funnelled into destroying wildlife-rich meadows, woods, wetlands and rivers

2) while the precise formula has varied over the years, CAP essentially requires farmers to wreck nature in order to receive larger subsidies. agricultural intensification - responsible for so much pollution and wildlife loss - is one of CAP's core aims

3) CAP also favours larger farms over small ones, which twinned with intensification has driven down the number of people actually working the land.
in 1973 Ireland had around 263000 farm workers versus only ~85000 today (iiea.com/wp-content/upl…)

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collbradán

@collbradan

14 Jun 20

in 2010 this was a lawn

since then, its been allowed to grow all spring and summer, followed by cutting and removing clippings in autumn/winter

*we didn't resow* - most of the plants you can see spread naturally when released from frequent mowing

if we had resown, we'd have unwittingly wiped out our (then unknown) population of adder's tongue fern - a rare plant of old grasslands

(centre of the pic, doesn't look much like a fern at all!)

Read 5 tweets

collbradán

@collbradan

5 Jun 20

large herbivores, trees and flowers: an Irish and Scottish perspective 🐂🌳🌼(thread, a bit detailed).

outside of cities, our surroundings are massively shaped by the actions of large herbivores - cattle, horses, sheep and deer - alongside our efforts to manage or exploit them

in the lowlands, our efforts to exploit cattle primarily determines how the landscape looks (intensively managed grass fields), except in surviving woods, wetlands and meadows.

in the uplands the actions of the herbivores themselves are more important (the focus of this thread)

large herbivores mainly influence vegetation by feeding. when they eat trees and other woody plants we call this browsing, and when they eat grasses, wildflowers and other non-woody plants we call this grazing.
the rate of browsing/grazing is how much they eat over time

Read 16 tweets

collbradán

@collbradan

7 Feb 20

western Ireland and Britain are among a handful of places on Earth where temperate rainforest can form. this thread is a mini guide to some of the things you can find there:

1) trees drenched in mosses and ferns. hyperhumid conditions mean that plants don't need to rely on soil for moisture, releasing them to carpet leaning tree trunks and snakey branches

2) lichens- lots and lots of lichens, a few of which are found nowhere else in the world. some of the big leafy ones turn nitrogen from the air into fertiliser for their host trees

Read 9 tweets

collbradán

@collbradan

17 Sep 19

@HuffPost

enough is enough: Ireland is NOT planting trees to combat climate change @HuffPost. 70% of trees planted will be non-native commercial conifers destined for clearfell. they threaten wildlife and will not reduce atmospheric carbon in the long run (thread)

huffpost.com/entry/ireland-…

Sitka spruce from the pacific NW is the main forestry tree in Ireland. it is densely planted and usually harvested after 40 years. i've done some carbon calculations to test lobbyist claims that new spruce plantations will act as carbon sinks...

...Sitka spruce are planted on marginal agricultural land, which often means species rich meadows. these can be home to rare and declining species, like the marsh fritillary butterfly. these meadows store a lot of carbon in their soils...

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