Sir, - It is ironic that Dr. Niall O'Carroll uses the expression "unquestioned success" to describe Coillte Teoranta's performance since its inception (November 7th). As he points out, the Irish Forest Service started out as the British Forest Service which left, as a parting legacy, its policy of relying overwhelmingly on alien conifers.
The policy was also, naturally enough, considered an unquestioned success" in Great Britain up to the early 1980s. But by then, people such as Dr. Oliver Rackham of Cambridge University - one looks in vain for his counterpart in this country - had begun asking some very serious questions indeed, mainly about the environmental damage being done, on the one hand, to biodiversity, soil, and water, and on the other, to tourism through the destruction of historic landscapes.
The result culminated in the Broadleaves Policy of 1985, which led to the abandonment of massive coniferisation in favour of the present UK forestry policy, based for the most part on native trees. I wonder how much longer the Irish environment will have to suffer Coillte Teoranta's "unquestioned success." - Yours, etc,
Castlegregory, Co Kerry.