Galway farmer loses 30ac of forestry following storm Éowyn

Forestry owners have suffered devastating losses following last week's major weather event.

One Galway farmer near Loughrea woke up last Friday morning to 30ac of his 80ac forest lying flat in the aftermath of storm Éowyn.

"There's at least a third of it levelled and it was all grade one forestry. It's a massive hit, it was my pension fund. It's just devastating because we were this close to the end," he told the Irish Farmers Journal.

The 35-year-old plantation had already been thinned three times, with a fourth thinning in the pipeline.

While some of the timber from the 130ft trees is salvageable, it will no longer make construction grade timber, with potential monetary losses amounting to anywhere from €100,000 to €300,000.

The only option he feels now is to "deck the whole thing" and start over.

"It's very hard to know fully the extent of the damage. We can only see it from the ground, but drone footage would tell us more.

"It's a huge loss and there's no grant out there to replant. It would be incredibly hard to go back in and spend €100,000 replanting. It's just incredibly hard for private owners.

"In the west of Ireland, we're used to bad ground and forestry sites, but there's no incentive for young people to get into forestry now," he said.

Government

The Galway man, who is also milking cows, argued that the previous government "destroyed" the forestry industry.

"We're never going to meet our forestry targets with the way the thing is going. Young people just are not interested in forestry - there are too many risks and not enough incentives to get into it," he said.

Timber prices

Lower timber prices are now a real concern for this Galway farmer, who said that the price of timber had been very good.

This comes as leading forest industry CEO Enda Keane of Treemetrics warned that not only have forest owners lost the continued growth of the windblown trees, but they will also be hit by higher harvesting costs.