On Mon, 12 May 2008 07:00:49 +0100, "allan connochie"
wrote:


"Féachadóir" Féach@d.óir wrote in message
.. .
ScrÃ*obh "allan connochie" :

"jl" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Hal Ó Mearadhaigh. wrote:
Someone else wrote:
On Thu, 8 May 2008 16:57:04 +1000, "FarmI" ask@itshall 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
ships to ward off the Armada sounds a bit off.

The building of the Spanish Armada itself deforested Spain and Spain
is significantly larger than Ireland and Britain added together.

Culchie Aspirant

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