Latest news with #EoghanDaltun
Irish Examiner
21-07-2025
- General
- Irish Examiner
Laethanta Saoire: The glories of summer in a West Cork rainforest, by Eoghan Daltun
Over 16 years ago I moved from Dublin city to the wilds of the Beara Peninsula, West Cork. Ever since, the seasons have taken on incomparably more meaning in my life. Every passing year is now measured by cyclical change in the temperate rainforest and other natural habitats on the 73-acre farm I live with, and each period has its own very special charms. The autumn fall of forest leaves, nourishing the woodland floor with new organic matter for all nature's biodigesters to turn into rich soil, and food for new life. A wild eruption of fungi, in all sizes, shapes, and colours: many the fruiting bodies of complex underground mycorrhizal matrices that link the trees together: nature's combined telegraph wires and aid distribution network. Winter dormancy, a time of skeletal oaks revealing their true gnarled, twisting, sculptural forms; of low, thin sunlight raking the sleeping ecosystem. This is the best moment to seek out and remove alien invasive plant species like rhododendron from the forest, their evergreen glossy leaves much more evident when native vegetation has temporarily died back. In spring, carpets of wildflowers bloom in the rainforest: celandine (almost always the first), wood sorrel, dog violet, primrose, pignut, bluebell, yellow pimpernel, wood anemone, enchanter's nightshade, cow-wheat, kidney saxifrage, marsh violet, to name but a few. Up in the canopy, leaf buds begin to burst open, each one a photosynthetic solar panel, transforming atmospheric carbon pollution into rich life. Growth reaches its maximum through the summer months, the plant community working hard to power the entire ecosystem. Another layer of woody tissue is laid down around tree trunks, building on the concentric rings of previous years, each successive width dependent on the productivity permitted by warmth and rain levels. And for me, over the last few years, late spring to early summer is also the time when I'm busy with my Opinel number 12 pocketknife, if a free hour or two presents itself. I'd better quickly explain, before anyone gets the wrong idea. Eoghan Daltun is a big fan of the Opinel No 12 pocket knife. Throughout the years in Beara, I've been engaged in restoring what was a dying forest, and creating the conditions for it to expand in area. The problems were multiple, but at the core was ecological meltdown due to acute overgrazing. Sheep, plus invasive feral goats and sika deer, had been preventing the trees and other flora from regenerating by eating away virtually all native vegetation at ground level. Fencing the invasive grazers out gave rise to the most miraculous metamorphosis across most of the land, as native trees began to seed out profusely, and ground that had been shorn of life began to revert to its hugely diverse, natural state of temperate rainforest. But in some areas amounting to several acres, lifting the grazing pressure wasn't enough. Bracken, a native fern largely inedible to mammals, had taken over and, where especially dense, was smothering trees and everything else. Monocultures of this plant are now widespread across Ireland, and should be considered completely artificial: they arise because overgrazing causes forests to die off and be replaced by the only thing no animal eats. Interestingly though, in my own place I noticed that, where I cut access paths through the bracken, wild self-seeded trees quickly took advantage and corridors of saplings began to spring up: birch, willow, rowan, oak, hazel, hawthorn, and others. That got me thinking. In the spring, I'd often spot tree seedlings here and there, but these would be swamped when a new sea of bracken emerged some weeks later, and so become impossible to find. So I began marking the location of baby trees I came across by hammering in a wooden fencing stake alongside, and periodically returning to lop the heads off the ferns as they came up, roughly between late April and early July. Bracken is very tender at this stage, so a sharp blade slices through stems effortlessly; in contrast, it's much tougher when mature. The assistance I give is necessary solely in the immediate vicinity of a small tree, allowing it to reach the light. And it's temporary: once trees grow beyond the chest-high bracken tops, they're able to carry on by themselves, and will ultimately shade the fern out, returning it to its natural niche as just another component of the ecosystem. Nor do I feel the need to cut around every last tree: those that germinate further from others are prioritised. Slower growing species like oak also get a bit more love, since the pioneers (birch, willow, and rowan) are much better able to exploit any break in bracken cover and rocket up through. My son's collie dog, Charlie, accompanies me on these forays, playing his role as 'wolf'. Again, some explanation is required. This particular area was never deer-fenced, so sika occasionally pass through, and nibble on regenerating saplings. My theory is that Charlie's scent, which I like to imagine instinctively equals predator in a deer's mind, discourages them from hanging around. Despite occasionally finding a few odd droppings or signs of browsing, this approach seems to generally work, and I recently read an academic paper suggesting there's more to this than just wishful thinking on my part. Although at an early stage, the results of this new approach have been just wonderful, with most of the bracken-infested area now reverting to natural, native forest. And, just like the mature habitat elsewhere on the land, the natural regeneration will make for so much better, richer habitat than any planted trees. Here, they grow only where nature, not man, decreed: perhaps from a crack between large bounders, or from the side of a rockface, or two different species wrapping around each other as they develop. The diversity of outcomes is practically endless, in stark contrast to the monotonous uniformity of planting. Growth reaches its maximum through the summer months. Picture: Eoghan Daltun Further, despite its drawbacks, the bracken creates the right conditions for a specialist forest flora to persist – low light and high humidity levels through much of the spring and summer. When the land was grazed by sheep, these wildflowers would have been barely evident, and just about hanging on. They've now been released, and form great carpets of colour before the bracken comes up, in stark contrast to the other side of the sheep fence, which has stayed barren. The presence of this plant life is a massive bonus. As a general rule, natural regeneration of trees can often be extremely fast, but the associated biodiversity far slower to follow, especially if not connected to old woodland. In my place on the other hand, a rich ground flora has been here since the area was last forested, probably several centuries ago, waiting for the trees to return. Some people might consider what I'm doing with the bracken 'highly labour-intensive', but it's really not. It doesn't take long to make my rounds, and I easily manage to fit it in with the rest of my often-busy routine. I'm currently working on a third book (on rewilding in Ireland, again due to be published by Hachette), so spending some time engaged in non-taxing physical activity is the perfect antidote to sitting in front of a computer screen. To tell the truth, I yearn for those moments when I can get away and spend an hour or two at this 'work'. It's a deeply therapeutic time out, my mind dreamily observing what's going on in a self-creating ecosystem, surrounded by birdsong, fluttering butterflies, buzzing wild bees, perhaps the sun and a gentle breeze on my face. It's no exaggeration to call it a meditation, time and space for contemplative mind wanderings, as I physically wander through a wondrous wilderness that only a few years before didn't exist. Working together with nature to heal man-inflicted wounds is one of the most positive things we can do. And that knowledge is there, at the back of my mind, throughout. When the land has, in the future, fully reverted to natural forest, habitat for thousands of different species of animals, plants, and fungi, there'll be an immense satisfaction in remembering the bracken monoculture that I first found there. But there'll also be some regret: that I can't spend an occasional couple of summer hours with my trusty Opinel, helping birth a wild rainforest ecosystem. Eoghan Daltun has documented his rewilding work near Eyeries on the Beara peninsula in two books: An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, and The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey
Irish Independent
16-07-2025
- Irish Independent
Eoghan Daltun: ‘I haven't read any fiction for decades. If it's not real, it doesn't work for me any more'
Eoghan Daltun is a sculpture conservator, a High Nature Value farmer and a rewilder. Originally from Dublin, since 2009 he has lived with his two sons on their 73-acre farm near Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula in west Cork. He is author of the best-selling and award-winning book, An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding and The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey, both published by Hachette.
Irish Times
08-06-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Hungry goats divide Killiney as firefighting grazers move in again
Fresh from the drama of the planning application near Bono's house , leafy Killiney's WhatsApp chats are ablaze again with a new debate: are goats really the best way to manage the local environment? Here's how it works: a herd of old Irish goats – formerly farmyard favourites but now surviving mostly as marauding gangs of escapees in the uplands – is brought to a patch of hill under supervision. They chomp away, and the vegetation-less area becomes a fire break. This is of immediate concern in Killiney where a 2022 gorse fire at Mullins Hill threatened houses and left two firefighters with injuries . But it's an increasingly popular tactic for councils and land managers. They have been deployed, or are about to be, at: Howth Head and Dalkey Quarry in Dublin; Ardmore in Waterford ; Achill Island ; the Burren in Co Clare; and at Coole Park in Co Sligo, eating shrubs whose ancestors were once admired by WB Yeats. Sounds like a good plan, then? Sort of. The goats are not picky eaters. Dún Laoghaire Rathdown Council's 2024 biodiversity report notes that on nearby Dalkey Island, all is low grass and 'no woody plants have become established, probably due to constant grazing by goats'. That's not an ideal outcome for the environmentally conscious. READ MORE Author and rewilded Eoghan Daltun says the idea is 'the height of ecological illiteracy'. 'The whole of Ireland was once covered in habitats like rainforests, bog, other types of forest – none of them would burn because they would all retain water and let it out slowly. The English ecologist Oliver Rackham once said that native woodlands burn like wet asbestos.' [ Emerald Isle no more: Why is nature eroding so fast? Opens in new window ] With the woods gone, the scrub does present a fire risk for a period, but letting the woods regrow is a better solution than introducing goats every year forever, he says. The council says the beasts are 'less destructive than frequent use of machinery, with a lower carbon footprint and more sensitive to wildlife' – but those are both degrowth strategies. 'Concreting over the whole place would achieve the same thing,' says Daltun. 'And it wouldn't be much worse for biodiversity.' Marcus Collier, assistant professor of botany at Trinity College Dublin, says the picture is more complicated. 'Much of the academic research points to 'grazing for biodiversity' initiatives as having positive outcomes in most cases as well as being novel 'nature-based solutions' for reducing fire intensity,' he said. 'Biodiversity loss is strongly linked to over- and under-grazing, so getting the balance right is tricky.' For Independent Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillor Hugh Lewis, the 2024 pilot in Killiney achieved its objectives 'whilst also having popular support', and is now an 'essential element of the wildfire management plan for the area'. 'This practice has been used successfully in Howth for many years,' he told Overheard. 'Its more recent effectiveness in Killiney can and should be emulated by other councils dealing with wildfire management across the country.' Zero back and sides it is for Ireland's hills then. An empty balloon Then US president Joe Biden with Corkman Micheál Martin in Carlingford in 2023 Fond memories abide in Mayo and Louth of the 2023 visit of former US president Joe Biden , who largely eschewed high-level diplomacy to focus on rattling around the homeplaces of his various ancestors making quips to smiling locals like any 80-year-old Irish American in the old country. He even made international news when he alleged that his distant cousin, the All Blacks-conquering rugby fullback Rob Kearney, 'beat the hell out of the Black and Tans' – again, fairly standard for an octogenarian Irish-American. He also referred to Micheál Martin as a 'proud son of Louth', among other inaccuracies. The Irish press pack was kept at a fair distance from Earth's most nuclear-armed man at the time, so it's interesting to read in CNN anchor Jake Tapper's book Original Sin of the US perspective on how the trip went. An energised Biden is described, giving his Ballina speech, visiting Knock and addressing the Houses of the Oireachtas. Then he encounters Michael D Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin where, true to form, duties went 'on and on'. 'When the high wore off … it was akin to witnessing all the air empty from a balloon,' Tapper writes. Democratic Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley noted that Biden needed his bed – his speech was 'breathless, soft, weak'. He reminded the Congressman of his father who had recently died of Parkinson's, an observation with which another congressman, Brian Higgins, whose own father had died with Alzheimer's, agreed. 'When people see that stuff, it conjures up a view that there's something going on neurologically,' he said. Biden, who often had more important things to do than visit Knock, would remain president for almost two more years and, for a period, was ramping up to run for another four. A strange clutch of associates Lee Harvey Oswald: a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus? Photograph: AP For those who can't make it to the Bloomsday exhibition in Tehran previously highlighted by Overheard , there's an option closer to home: James Joyce's Ulysses and the Assassination of JFK, a lecture by Prof Barry Keane of the University of Warsaw at Dublin's James Joyce Centre on the day itself. A bolder effort even than Stephen Dedalus's algebraic proof that Shakespeare is the ghost of his own father, the spiel is as follows: 'Considered will be the figure of Lee 'Leopold' Oswald, who, like a composite of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, is out of sorts socially and professionally, nurses personal historical hurt and strong political views and is ill at ease in his domestic circumstances. What is more, Oswald boasts a strange clutch of associates and is given to flâneurial wanderings, turning up in the most unexpected of places.' It will be, the James Joyce Centre says, 'a demonstration that truth can be stranger than fiction'. Help wanted Photograph:Who runs Ireland? Nobody at the moment, with many of the State's most high profile jobs unoccupied. currently displays advertisements for chief executive officers at Fáilte Ireland (over the €6 billion tourist industry), Bus Éireann (over 100 million passenger journeys a year) and the National Concert Hall (over orchestras performing the Star Wars theme). That's on top of the other recruitment processes ongoing or ultimately necessary given the news in recent months. A new Garda commissioner is required , as is a head of the Arts Council after Maureen Kennelly was blocked from a full second term by Minister Patrick O'Donovan. Bernard Gloster has signalled his intention to step down from the HSE in March. The Housing Activation Office lacks a tsar, which it may or may not need according to the department's top civil servant, but is going to get anyway according to Jack Chambers. The FAI also lacks a chief football officer and a head of women's football after some premature departures. Children's Health Ireland is missing at least four board members. Talented administrators who yearn to explain themselves to backbench TDs on drizzly Thursday mornings at Leinster House: take your pick.
