DEAR SIR, I read with interest your article on the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s Shared National Vision for Trees and Forests in Ireland until 2050, (Irish Farmers Journal, 15 October 2022).

The report outlines in clear terms the aspiration, if not intent, to reach a point where Ireland’s “forests and woodlands will be seen as a symbol of... environmental changes needed to... address the climate emergencies of the 2020s”.

Further, the report’s main thrust states that “the right trees in the right places...with the right management” is what’s required to reach the point outlined above. All to the good, so far.

However it struck me that, before embarking on this necessary journey regarding the climate crisis, and planting whole swathes of farmland in forestry, a survey ought to be carried out into the loss of trees that are already in situ.

The twice-yearly destruction of hedgerows continues unabated, as the most casual observation throughout the countryside will attest. This action takes out countless trees, mature, indigenous, native.

As outlined in ‘A guide for landowners to managing roadside trees’ (Department of Agriculture, October 2021), trees “capture pollution, release oxygen, store carbon”. Quite.

The Shared Vision report states that the “Irish landscape features a rich variety of diverse, resilient and healthy trees”.

It’s my contention that an innumerable amount of these are actually in hedgerows.

These, then, ought to be the subject of the right management, as they are already delivering multiple benefits for the environment, and society.

The Shared Vision certainly makes the right noises, but if we don’t hold on to what we currently have, the notion that trees, forestry and woodlands are seen as symbols of “transformational social, economic and environmental change” by 2050 may very well come to be just that – notional.