Re: Lack Of Trees In Irish And British Countrysides

"Féachadóir" <Féach@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:dind24tcckvj5emfmvj642sgldm3k8gbgu@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Scríobh "allan connochie" <conncohies@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>:
>>
>>"jl" <jl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
>>news:4f9cfb5854jl@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> In article <68johfF2thkejU1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>>   Hal Ó Mearadhaigh. <homestud@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>> Someone else wrote:
>>>> > On Thu, 8 May 2008 16:57:04 +1000, "FarmI" <ask@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 be given>
>>>> > wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> Ireland's population grew to around 8 million. But that had little to

>>>> do
>>>> with the state of the forests. Disease and over harvesting of trees 
>>>> were
>>>> the main causes of the deforestation.
>>>
>>> As Ireland had no coal, the needs of 8 million people for charcoal and
>>> cooking woulkd certainly damage the forests. Peat was available of 
>>> course
>>> - but only after the forests had made room for it.
>>
>>Plus I'd imagine that Ireland must be the same as Britain in that
whatever
>>deforestation took place in the second half of the second millenium was
>>deforestation of what little remained of the woodland cover. Most of
>>Britain's had already gone by 1500AD because of pastoral agriculture;
the
>>need for resources; and even possibly natural climatic effects within
the
>>last 5000 years or so. This website claims (I imagine it can only be
>>guesswork) that the original forests had been halved by 500BC and was
down
>>to around just 15% by the 1080s. Perhaps degree may have been different 
>>but
>>surely Iron Age and first millenium Ireland couldn't have been that
>>different from Britain at that time?
>
> Irish agriculture was much more pastoral than arable, which may have
> meant we held on to forest for longer.

That may be so but then again the more pastoral regions of Britain were
just 
as treeeless as anywhere else. My own area in the Southern Uplands of 
Scotland for example! It may be as I said a matter of degree and you may 
indeed be right in that 11thC or 16thC Ireland may have had a larger 
fraction of its original forest intact, but what I was saying was that 
surely this was only a fraction of what had been? Iron Age and first 
millenium Ireland couldn't have been so much different from Britain -
could 
it?  I know it is only one poster sayig it but the idea that a huge
primeval 
forest covered Ireland until Elizabeth of England cut it down to build a
few 
****ps to ward off the Armada sounds a bit off.


Allan