Ireland

Press Release - September 1, 2006

We the undersigned wish to register our concern over the certification of tree plantations in our country by the FSC, which has granted a green label to monoculture plantations that have proven to be socially and environmentally destructive. We are aware that the FSC is carrying out a review of its plantation certification policy, and it is our hope that the result of this process will be an end to the certification of these types of plantations by the FSC in the future.

In the last few centuries, there has been a massive deforestation of Irish land. What has been replaced, has been by and large replaced with foreign exotic near-monoculture conifer plantations, mainly by one company: Coillte, which owns 438,000ha of certified plantations. In 2002, Coillte Teoranta obtained Forest Stewardship Council certification from the Soil Association/Woodmark (they were formerly certified by SGS). However, certification of these plantations has been strongly criticised in Ireland for a number of reasons, among which because they: