Philip

Is it nice to look at this stream through an ecologist's eyes and hear that assessment of it?

Environmentalists said that the book was one-sided industry messaging that doesn't mention the ecological damage done by commercial forestry.

That stream is a small stretch of good news in a river catchment that is otherwise under enormous pressure from intensive agriculture.

And they weren't wrong.

The industry replied, commercial forestry is a necessary component of a sustainable approach to meet the huge human demand for wood.

The Boyne Rivers Trust is trying to replicate that success on other farms, an effort that starts on a polytunnel near Drogheda.

And they weren't wrong either.

The Department of Education, for its part, distanced itself from the row, saying the teaching materials were a matter for teachers to make a decision on.

So with that in mind, I visited St Patrick's National School, Kirtlestown, high up in the Wicklow Hills, surrounded by both commercial and native woodland, to see how the book was received by teachers there.

Emma King is one of the teachers in Kirtlestown.

We're in Coran is coordinating a volunteer effort to gather tree seeds throughout the Boyne catchment area, transfer them to polytunnels in Louth and Meath, before the resulting saplings are then planted on 400 kilometres of the banks of the Boyne and its tributary streams and rivers.

So Emma saw straight away that the book did have some uses, though she wouldn't want it to be the only one that the kids ever read about trees.

But then they know a little bit more about trees in Kirtlestown than most schools do.

So far, so cute.

A nice community project with small dividends.

But this is the point at which the Boyne Rivers Trust has taken things to an entirely new level.

Zoologist Sarah Austin is also the River Trust's farm advisor, going from farm to farm, drafting water quality plans for those farms and offering to plant free trees for the farmers where they will prevent pollution and cool water temperatures.

I was in the school for Tree Top Tuesdays, when Emma takes the junior and senior infants into the wood behind the school for a class in nature, about nature.

Music

Junior and senior infants with that level of knowledge about trees.