Is more complicated. Pines are "weak" creatures, always prone to be bullied and displaced by other trees in the lowlands, but they are survivalists. Pines grow in lands forbidden to other trees: high mountains, damp situations, sandy and the poorest soils.

When you had burnt the landscape stripped to the bone, to solid rock. When nothing grows, you put a pine and it will survive. Acid soil is better than no soil at all.

Some of this areas, when left alone, include slowly other species (holly, rowan), and dying pines, make interesting unique landscapes, peat bogs and moors. They host much more biodiversity than it could seem at first glance and a lot of endemisms also.

The words of the Scottish singer Jim Malcolm ring true here:

https://www.jimmalcolm.com/music/sconeward/#BARREN

Last verse:

Slow return to native timber

So they plant the sitka spruce

Only fit to wipe your bottom

No damn good to build a hoose

> There is vast swathes of them around where I live in Scotland and there is no bio-diversity there at all. They are planted so close that the canopy coverage allows very little sunlight to the forest floor, and even if it did not much could grow because of the heavy littering of dead needles that cause very acidic soil.

Be patient. Give it 80 years.

What happens after 80 years of acidification?

I mean, there are old spruce forests you can look at and see. Essentially the Boreal forest but with the benefit of your warmer weather in Ireland. Think Oregon coastal forests. People keep talking about a lack of biodiversity and acidity, but did you expect a fully functional old forest to be delivered out of the box?? For it to happen immediately after planting? Trees are a long, long-term investment. Building an entire functional forest will take more than a human lifetime, really a few. You need to wait for the trees to mature, a few generations of birds, animals to move in. Sooner or later other plants will start popping up, as they do in the wild, so you'll get hemlock in there eventually and depending on what else is spreading seed, other underbrush.

https://beautifuloregon.com/sitka-spruce-siuslaw-national-fo...

There are no bad trees, but the context for them just might be! Ireland's semi-state forestry co with just little planning & a healthy minority of native trees, could we have advanced this lovely idea by decades.

However, I do wonder if we're running out of climate runway, to ever seen anything as beautiful as Oregon's spruce forests in Ireland. The day after they clear a commercial forest here is not pretty!

On a related note (not that anyone reading this today will ever get to see its glory days) private individuals in Ireland have planted, far inland, a Redwood grove as a hedge against environmental disaster:

https://www.giantsgrove.ie/giant-redwoods/

edit: erroneous apostrophe

A stunning autumn

> There is vast swathes of them around where I live in Scotland and there is no bio-diversity there at all.

Um, you do know that forests have stages? Right?

Evergreens tend to be one of the first stages. Evergreens generally grow quickly and tolerate fairly crappy soils. "waterlogged soil with high clay content" (from the article) is a REALLY crappy soil for trees. The littering of needles generally helps add some level of nutrients back to depleted soils (an acidic humus is going to be vastly better than completely leached out waterlogged clay) It's why you plant evergreens on strip mined areas to help reclaim them.

After the evergreens, the deciduous trees start coming in from the edges--but this takes decades.

Now, it's possible that Ireland/Scotland don't have enough deciduous trees (or, in the case of Scotland, the climate may simply not be correct--Scotland has a lot of land that's really crappy for growing anything much at all) to start the process and those trees need to be added to their planning. Fair enough.

However, I don't see any discussion or acknowledgement of any of this in the article.

These forests are essentially tree farms. There is no bio diversity and no deciduous trees growing in from the side. The forest will be felled for wood long before a deciduous tree would have time to grow. It's a travesty. Come to Ireland and see for yourself.

> These forests are essentially tree farms.

Then the real problem is that this really isn't "afforestation" at all and what trees are being planted is irrelevant.

> Um, you do know that forests have stages? Right?

Calling you out for the needlessly confrontational tone here. It turns what could be an informative post into an agressive one.

> Um, you do know that forests have stages? Right?

Right. From the article, the stages are:

> The trees mature in about 30 years ... and are then felled, making way for a fresh plantation.

> When machines chop down swathes of forest, a controversial process known as clear-felling, the landscape is devastated, said Stewart. “It looks like Hiroshima.”