SOME farmers, disgruntled locals and activists dressed in traditional 'straw boys' attire go out into a field and uproot hundreds of freshly-planted trees. If you're looking for a punchline, then you'll be disappointed.
In what's been called a "bizarre" stunt, a group of demonstrators flocked to a forestry plantation in rural Ireland this month and tore Sitka spruce saplings from the ground. The action – said to be a call for 'trees for climate, not profit' – saw the trees used to block drains at a publicly-owned Coillte woodland in County Leitrim.
READ MORE: Forestry bosses speak out after activists uproot Sitka saplings
Understandably, the reaction from the industry has been one of disbelief.
Mark McAuley, director of the Irish industry body Forest Industries Ireland, said: "I find it bizarre for climate activists to be pulling up trees.
"Over the last 100 years, Ireland has managed to grow its forest cover from virtually nothing to over 800,000 hectares and those forests contain over 300 million tonnes of carbon.
"It is an economically and environmentally-sustainable forestry model that supports the planting of new forests and also delivers timber products that lock away carbon for generations.
"Ireland’s wood products displace 3.7 million tonnes of CO2 emissions each year as the world is striving to decarbonise the built environment by substituting carbon intensive cement and steel with timber buildings.
"In Ireland, Sitka Spruce is at the heart of this natural carbon capture and storage system.”
Tensions around Sitka are nothing new, but in recent times the British forestry industry has struck a more unforgiving tone in the wake of mainstream criticism. Last year, Richard Stanford, the chief executive of the Forestry Commission, called for an end to the "stigma around conifers", saying: “We must end the dogma of native broadleaf good, conifer bad."
When it comes to issues like this, the industry view is pretty clear.
However, it's not the forestry sector that's carrying out protests like the one in Ireland (and in Leitrim, which is the most heavily forested part of the country). And this is the key point.
It's completely understandable – and probably necessary – for forestry to act bullish in the face of well-meaning, but often misplaced, climate activism. But we'll struggle to bring people onside if we do.
When you consider that fast-growing, thinned Sitka spruce soaks up more CO2 per hectare than any other type of woodland (according to a landmark Forest Research report in 2022), then there should be a simple case to make.
READ MORE: Conifer or broadleaf - which soaks up more CO2? New report sheds some light
The woodland options examined in the report showed that planting a hectare of lightly-managed broadleaf woodland would result in an average CO2 uptake of 1.3tCO2 per year until 2050, and that a hectare of moderately-growing coniferous woodland would soak up 4.9tCO2 per year for the same period.
Over the period from 2022-2100, average annual CO2 uptake from these broadleaf and conifer woodlands would rise to 5.7tCO2 and 6.7tCO2, respectively. These figures include carbon stored in wood products from harvested woodlands.High-yielding sites for coniferous production, and the addition of potential avoided emissions through using wood products, would increase these rates substantially. (Across the same period, fast-growing, thinned Sitka spruce would sequester 14.0tCO2.)
When you put it like that, it seems pretty clear that Sitka plantations aren't the enemy of the net-zero mission, but can play a crucial part, both in Ireland and the UK (which, Scotland aside, is regularly planting more broadleaves than conifers each year).
But how can we get this message across in a way that persuades the general public, instead of dissuading them?
This piece is an extract from our latest Forestry Latest News newsletter, which is emailed out at 4PM every Friday with a round-up of the week's top stories.
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