Forestry in numbers The area of forests in Italy is about 10 million hectares, equivalent to a third of the National territory and to a 5% of the European forested area. These areas occupy 8% of the national territory (1). 22.2% of the National forested area is under NATURA2000 (34).

Cansiglio

Italy now has more forest and woodland than it has had in modern times – 35 per cent of the country is covered in trees. There are now 27 million acres – about 42,000 square miles – of forested land, more than double the area at the end of the Second World War, according to the National Inventory of Forests.

31.77 %

9,149,000 ha

33.9% —or about 9,979,000 hectares—of Italy is forested. Change in Forest Cover: Between 1990 and 2000, Italy gained an average of 106,400 hectares of forest per year. The amounts to an average annual reforestation rate of 1.27%….Italy.

Nigeria

Brazil had the most forest loss of any country in the world, according to WRI’s data; Bolivia came in at #5 worldwide with 154,488 hectares destroyed.

Ireland was left with very few native tree species following the Ice Age and a changing climate. Over the centuries, Ireland experienced a near-total destruction of its forests mainly because of human activity and a deterioration of the climate: from an initial forest cover of around 80% to less than 1%.

Our most common native trees include oak, ash, hazel, birch, Scots pine, rowan, and willow. Eventually, people brought other trees, such as beech, sycamore, horse chestnut, spruce, larch, and fir to Ireland.

According to various sources, Ireland is currently about 11 percent forested, and although that’s a low number, it’s a huge increase from the centuries before. In the late 1920s, just 1.2 percent of the island enjoyed forest cover, leaving 98.8 percent of Ireland more or less treeless.

After centuries of destruction, Ireland’s forests are returning. Ireland was once a land of woods and forests. The small island once had forest cover of around 80 percent, but today has one of the lowest rates in Europe, just 11 percent.

“Ireland was once a forest culture, but following the development of agriculture practices, since the 1600’s, the proportion of Irish woodland has now reached an all time low. Unfortunately, Ireland has been almost completely deforested with merely 1% of native woodland left.”

Tongass National Forest

European Forests. Europe was once covered by forest, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. The original forest covered probably 80-90% of the continent. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Stream warm the continent.

Due to feudal structures, the power over and ownership of forests was not at all clear for many centuries, which resulted in widespread overexploitation. As a result, during the period 1750-1850 forests in Central Europe had been decimated, causing a serious lack of timber.

45 percent

In total, forests cover 37.7 % of the EU’s land area and the six Member States with the largest forest areas (Sweden, Finland, Spain, France, Germany and Poland) account for two thirds of the EU’s forested areas (3.2. 10).

Forests are the only carbon sinks on Earth. How do trees act as carbon sinks? Reforestation always occurs as a result of human intervention. The main purpose of a forester is to identify land for timber harvesting.