Native trees not out of the woods as finances constrict

ANOTHER LIFE:A BIG SURPRISE in growing trees is that most of them would rather not be hugged. To discourage this, they start growing branches within a half-metre of the ground and these, lengthening and drooping, effectively seal off access to the trunk and shade out the plant competition.

Our teenage beech tree sweeps the ground with a crinoline of leaves, except for the bit where I have carved them away to reach the garden tap.

In this crowded world, few trees are left to their own devices.

Growing tall and straight at arm's length in a plantation, their lowest branches are starved of light and the few that develop are pruned away. On farmland, cattle browse the branching shoots as high as they can reach. Or people like me, wanting tree-shaped, lollipop trees we have known since Hansel and Gretel, lop off the lower branches in order to mow the lawn without having to bend double.

The ash tree we planted too close to the house, for the pleasure of watching thrushes from our fireside, lost another bottom branch last week, after due domestic consultation: its thrashing about beyond the window was distracting me from the telly. After surgery with the bush-saw, I gave the tree a hug, as one does, and, gazing up, admired the boxer's biceps it flexes against the wind.

Who, I wonder, will get the chance to hug the one million little oak trees now growing in the Coillte nursery at Ballintemple, Co Carlow? All raised from native acorns, painstakingly collected from what remain of Ireland's oaks, they were intended specifically for planting, over the next two years, in projects grant-aided from the Native Woodland Scheme. But this has been plunged into uncertainty, and not for the first time, by news that its conservation work will receive no further funding until further notice.

I suppose it is hardly surprising that, warned to cut back on inessentials, the Government's Forest Service should pick on a lower, minor branch in its priorities. Element 1, as it's called, of the Native Woodland Scheme, targets the surviving remnants of our native trees, clearing them of rhododendron and scrub, putting up proper fences and planting new trees - including oaks from the Coillte nursery - to restore them into proper woods.

This has now been put on hold - again.

Element 2, operating the grants for creating new native woodland on greenfield sites, will keep going - or will it? Since the overall scheme was introduced in 2001, a most ambitious new step in re-greening Ireland, nearly 5,000 hectares have been brought into Element 1 - a mere fraction, but a good start, of the 100,000 hectares of native woodland needing attention. The planting of new woodland in Element 2 amounts to a mere 315 hectares - this mostly from landowners enthused by their work so far with Element 1. So the million oak seedlings are still looking for a home.

There will, of course, be far graver consequences of Ireland's current dip in fortunes. But after two previous curtailments, in 2002 and 2007, the assumption that the woods can wait must dispirit the exceptional partnership of the Forest Service, Marine Institute, Central and Regional Fisheries Boards, Coford, Coillte, National Parks and Wildlife Service, Heritage Council and NGOs. Several agencies fund the expert Woodlands of Ireland group to push the scheme along. And that's not to mention, of course, the ecologists, foresters and contractors whose livelihoods have been bound up with it.

Green projects now under threat do not stop there. This summer, the Forest Service published an enthusiastic new manual for its Neighbourwood Scheme that grant-aids "close-to-home" woodlands developed in partnership with local people. Most of them are on publicly owned land - pocket woodlands in built-up areas, or rural woods not far from town - and they are intended for public enjoyment and school nature study. Launched in 2001 and beginning to get somewhere, it is also, it seems, subject to "difficult choices".

Many of the broadleaf woods Ireland needs are those along banks of rivers and streams, protecting water quality, giving shade where it's needed and creating an insect-friendly habitat that's good for aquatic life.

Riparian woodlands, as they're called, are Ireland's rarest type of native woods and are largely unexplored ecologically and technically.

An arrestingly attractive and readable booklet has just been issued by the Forest Service in partnership with Woodlands of Ireland. The expertise compiled in Native Riparian Woodlands - A Guide to Identification, Design, Establishment and Managementcomes, among others, from the Marine Institute's salmon research centre at Burrishoole in Mayo, and the North Western Regional Fisheries Board, whose work on river restoration has so improved life for salmon and trout. Its advice spans both managing existing river woods and planting new ones.

Like the trees, and the people who care for them, it will endure.