Stop all forestry planting on high organic matter soils, bogs and peatlands across the island of Ireland.
Why is this important?
Current Irish government forestry policy is causing huge damage to communities and the environment in our county of Leitrim and all across Ireland. The planting of conifers on bogs and on soils with high organic matter on an industrial scale is releasing very large amounts of carbon and seriously damaging our environment.
The trees in these plantations are not tying up or storing as much carbon as is being released by this highly damaging practices.
Peatlands are the superheroes of ecosystems: purifying water, sometimes mitigating flooding and providing a home for rare species. And they beat nearly every system when it comes to carbon storage. Known peatlands only cover about 3% of the world’s land surface, but store at least twice as much carbon as all of Earth’s standing forests. In addition, at least one-third of the world’s organic soil carbon, which plays a vital role in mitigating climate change and stabilizing the carbon cycle, is in peatlands.
It has taken 11 thousand years to grow these bogs and soils and these very sites are being destroyed in a matter of hours by forestry practices.
We call on the Irish government to immediately cease this damaging forestry system.
