Local election candidate calls for beneficial afforestation strategy

Forestry strategy should be strengthened to prioritise afforestation taken by public bodies, farmers, local communities, and landowners overinvestment management ventures; that is according to Castlebar local election candidate Donna Hyland.

Ahead of a public meeting today at Balla Community Centre to discuss the Save Craggagh campaign, Ms Hyland said the community ‘are fed up with the expansion of forestry in their village’.

Examples of this include farmland being ‘planted with Silka Spruce plantations by foreign investment funds who have purchased good agricultural land’, with no planning permissions required.

“Rural communities can submit objections to the granting of licences by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, but communities feel powerless to prevent afforestation in their own areas due to an ambiguous objection system”, she added.

The local election candidate said a change in the forestry strategy is ‘needed to protect rural dwellers’. 

She called the community of Craggagh having over 50% of their area planted with Silka Spruce Forest ‘unacceptable’.

“The environmental impact of over planting in this area is not even being considered. At a time when climate change reduction is a key priority of Mayo County Council and our national government, it seems the government needs to rethink the current afforestation strategy” she concluded.

Mayo TD, Rose Conway-Walsh, has been clear about Sinn Féin’s commitment to a sustainable afforestation strategy, recognising the importance of increasing the percentage of land under forestry in the mitigation of carbon emissions.

Ms Conway-Walsh acknowledges that ‘not all plantations are beneficial to the local environment and not all species are beneficial to local habitats’. 

“The intensive plantation of invasive species such as Sitka Spruce has had a detrimental environmental ecological impact. This type of plantation has also had a regressive economic and social environmental impact” she continued.

The Mayo TD said she is ‘looking forward’ to meeting in Balla tonight to listen to concerns around the issue, and working with Donna Hyland and the local community to ensure that they are ‘protected and empowered’.