Almost two and a half times the annual timber harvest in the State was felled in Storm Éowyn, satellite imagery reveals.
Some 23,600 hectares (230.6sq km) of forestry has been destroyed, according to Department of Agriculture preliminary estimates, though the figure could be as high as 30,000 hectares.
The department has used the European Space Agency’s Sentinal-2 satellite to monitor the damage. It estimates the windfallen trees amount to the equivalent of about 10 million cubic metres (10 million tonnes) of timber. For comparison, the annual timber harvest in the State is 4.3 million tonnes.
The total value of last year’s forest harvest was €219 million, which indicates that the amount felled during Storm Éowyn could be worth more than €500 million.
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Worst hit was Connacht, which accounts for 44 per cent of all the damage done to forestry by the storm. Some 10,400 hectares have been flattened in that province. Leinster (22.1 per cent), Munster (18.6 per cent) and the three counties of Ulster in the Republic (15.3 per cent) make up the rest.
[ Storm Éowyn causes €500m damage to forestsOpens in new window ]
Overwhelmingly, the trees that have fallen are commercial spruce (82.2 per cent) and other conifers (12.7 per cent). Just 5.1 per cent are broadleaved, a category encompassing most deciduous trees such as oak, maple, beech and birch trees.
The damage done is much worse than the previous record-stetting storm of December 2014. Storm Darwin flattened 8,300 hectares (83sq km) of forest, bringing down 7.5 million trees.
The damage done by Storm Éowyn is almost evenly spread between public and privately owned plantations.
TreeMetrics, a forest monitoring company based in Cork, estimates that six counties, Galway, Roscommon, Leitrim, Cavan, Longford and Sligo, account for nearly half of all the damage done by Storm Éowyn.
Minister of State at the Department of Forestry Michael Healy-Rae said “having more than twice the annual cut on the ground represents an enormous challenge”.
He urged forestry owners who have felling licences to clear felled trees. He said the department is prioritising granting felling licences to forest owners affected by Storm Éowyn who do not already have licences.
A spokesman for semi-State commercial forestry body Coillte said Storm Éowyn has done “unprecedented levels of damage” to Irish forestry. Coillte manages 440,000 hectares of the national forestry estate, almost half of the total forestry.
The spokesman said “speed is of the essence” in the removal of timber from forests. While upended trees that retain their roots can remain in a forest for several months, those where the trunk has snapped will have to be removed quicker before the timber rots.
Coillte said its harvest of windblown wood will be sold “through the normal channels” and used for construction timber to build homes and for pallets, fencing, panel-boards and energy wood.
The Social, Economic, Environmental Forestry Association of Ireland (SEEFA), which represents private forestry owners, believes the Government will need to bring in contractors from abroad to clear away all the timber.
In 2005 Storm Gudrun flattened many forests in Sweden and created the world’s largest wood stockpile.
[ After Storm Éowyn, Ireland must do what Sweden did 20 years agoOpens in new window ]
The Swedish government passed emergency legislation to ensure the valuable timber knocked would be saved. The clean-up operation was successfully conducted over an 18-month period before wood decay and economic loss.
In excess of 50 million cubic meters was salvaged within a year, with harvesting and haulage contractors mobilised from all over Europe.
