In very good news for the environment, it has been announced that there are plans to plant a mammoth 22 million trees a year on Irish soil!
This comes in response to the ongoing crisis in the Amazon Rainforest, where it is estimated that over 18,000 square km of forest burned throughout July alone.
The plan, which is set to be carried out over the next 20 years, is equivalent to planting more than 6,000 Croke Park pitches annually until 2040. Now that’s impressive.
This would increase the area of land under trees by 20%. And while this is undeniably a step in the right direction, Ireland would still rank bottom of the barrel in Europe for forest cover (ahead only of Malta).
The pledge is part of the Government’s Climate Action Plan and is an attempt to crackdown on the issue of greenhouse gases.
It’s thought that the majority of the planting will be carried out by the State, farmers and other large landowners. Anyone with a quarter acre of land is eligible to apply however and there are a number of schemes in place to help community groups.
The ambitious proposal isn’t short of sceptics though, with the director of Crann (the Trees for Ireland charity), Peadar Collins, saying there should be a focus on preserving as much as we can, replacing what’s removed and planting where there’s space. “Then we’ll make progress”, according to him.
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