Northern Ireland’s private forestry and woodland sector has welcomed the new Tree Planting Action Plan, launched recently by Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) Minister, Andrew Muir.

The new measure represents a plan for woodland creation, covering the period 2026 to 2032.

It has been designed to boost tree cover levels in Northern Ireland to 12 per cent of the available land area by 2050. The current afforestation figure sits at eight per cent.

Speaking at the launch of the new programme, Premier Woodlands’ managing director, John Hetherington, said that the company has a 36-year-long history of forestry development in Northern Ireland, adding: “We plant trees for all landowners. We welcome the new action plan as we do need more trees.

placeholder image — Premier Woodlands' managing director John Hetherington

“Sadly, the level of new planting is very low, compared with the rest of Ireland or Great Britain and even Europe. So we need more trees.

According to the Premier Woodlands’ representative, anything that can be done to encourage the planting of more trees is extremely positive. And we want to be part of this process,” he commented.

“Up to now Premier Woodlands has probably planted some 50M trees across Ireland and Great Britain. So, we have some idea in terms of what we are doing: the expertise is there. And we need the support of everyone when it comes to making the push towards the planting of more trees.”

John Joe O’Boyle is the Chief Executive of Northern Ireland’s Forest Service. He also attend the launch of the new Tree Planting Action Plan, commenting: “The minister commissioned the development of the plan last autumn. It is something that is necessary to identify key actions that are needed to be taken that can help to enable higher levels of tree planting in Northern Ireland.”

He added: “It was commissioned as a co-design process. This means that we were working right across the stakeholder sector in order to identify where different stakeholders were coming from.

“There was a very positive response from all of the stakeholders. There were numerous group meetings, numerous one-to-ones held in order to refine what different stakeholders saw as being constraints and opportunities in order to get more trees planted.”

The Forest Service representative concluded: “So that was refined down through the co-design process thereby creating a consensus right across the sector as to what are the key actions required to allow high rates of tree planting to be mobilised.”

Nigel Manley is the Northern Ireland Chairman of CONFOR, the body representing the professional interests of the private forestry and woodland development sectors.

He has welcomed the procedures put in place by Minister Andrew Muir to encourage tree planting rates in Northern Ireland.

He added: “Northern Ireland currently has the smallest footprint of woodland and forestry in the UK.

“It is currently sitting at 8.6% of the available land area. With the new Tree Planting Action Plan we are hoping to get this figure up to 12 per cent. We have got a lot of work to do. But if we can get behind the new plan and bring together all the various stakeholders together in a co-operative manner, we can give the plan our support, implement it and get it done.”

Significantly, the CONFOR representative believes that a lot of jobs will be sustained through the implementation of the new tree planting action programme.

He concluded: “The new initiative will also encourage greater investment within the private forestry sector, thereby creating even greater levels of employment. If we can get the trees in the ground, it will help to maintain the production of sustainably timber and timber products.”