"Way Back Jack" wrote in message
...
TV documentaries and travelogues reveal a lot of lush "green" in those
countrysides but a relative scarcity of trees. Is it climate? Too
windy in Ireland? Sheep and/or other livestock?

A few thousand years of human habitation and their domestic animals has
greatly reduced the trees. Prior to high densities of humans much of Europe
was heavily forested as the gulf stream moderates the temperature considerably
compared to similar latitudes in Asia or America.

David