Ciara Cullen: Ancient Pine Forest On Clare Island. 4.10.2023.

Ancient Pine Forest
The weathered tree stumps that can be seen half-submerged in the bog on both sides of the road are of scots pine (pinus sylvestrus) and are the remnants of an ancient forest. Carbon dating has shown them to have lived 7500 years ago, probably dying out, as they did elsewhere in Ireland, as a result of a changing climate and a rising water table. But the existence of charcoal on all the stumps invites speculation that they might have been felled by the island's earliest inhabitants. The acidity of the bog has preserved them until intensive peat cutting over the last two centuries has once more brought them to the surface With the passing of the great pine forests, other trees would have colonised the island including elms followed by a birch/hazel/oak phase. A wonderful example of this still exists northeast of here, an area of native woodland known locally as Lassau.
The tree-less landscape we see today on Clare island is relatively recent and the result of human impact. Even on the top of Knockmore, the island's highest mountain (460m) peat deposits of up to 5m thick include pine stumps showing that in the post-glacial era (or Holocene -the last 11700 years) nowhere on the island was above the treeline.
By the mid 16th century Grace O'Malley was still able to describe the island as being partially wooded. But intensifying pressure from a rapidly exploding population from the late 18th to mid 19th centuries left the island bare of trees, save a few pockets of scrub Woodland by the time of the Famine, when the island reached a peak population of over 1600.
Over the last decade, as livestock grazing has reduced, the native willow Salix cinerea is beginning to recolorise rough grazing areas, as nature attempts to re-establish woodland and biodiversity.