{"id":3500120,"date":"2024-03-06T14:51:03","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T14:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3500120"},"modified":"2024-03-06T14:51:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T14:51:03","slug":"rewilding-ireland-undoing-the-damage-from-a-history-of-deforestation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-03-06\/rewilding-ireland-undoing-the-damage-from-a-history-of-deforestation\/","title":{"rendered":"Rewilding Ireland: \u2018Undoing the damage\u2019 from a history of deforestation"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>Eoghan Daltun has spent the past 14 years successfully rewilding 29 hectares (73 acres) of farmland on the Beara Peninsula in southwestern Ireland.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Ireland is one of the most ecologically denuded countries in the world, only possessing about 11% forest cover but on this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, co-host Rachel Donald speaks with Daltun about how he came to accomplish his rewilding feat simply by letting nature take its course and erecting a good fence, which has rapidly led to the regeneration of native forest, wildflowers and fauna.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>They also discuss the historical drivers of ecological devastation that have led to the classic, tree-less Irish landscape, from ancient times to imperial colonization and the advent of modern farming, and what the potential of rewilding is to change that and boost biodiversity.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Rewilding advocate\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eoghandaltun.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">Eoghan Daltun<\/a>\u00a0was unsatisfied with life in Dublin, so he sold his property and bought a farm on the Beara Peninsula of southwestern Ireland. His plan was simple: remove the invasive plant species and then put up a fence to keep out the goats and nonnative sika deer. The land did the rest, rewinding time rapidly toward what is beginning to look like a temperate rainforest in just 14 years. Even rare native creatures like pine martens have discovered the regenerating habitat.<\/p>\n<p>Daltun joins the Mongabay Newscast to share his story and rewilding insights, which are detailed in his book<em>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/en\/book\/show\/62678715\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey Into the Magic of Rewilding<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Listen here:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"iframe-class\" title=\"Embed Player\" src=\"https:\/\/play.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/30139868\/height\/128\/theme\/modern\/size\/standard\/thumbnail\/yes\/custom-color\/4b603d\/time-start\/00:00:00\/hide-playlist\/yes\/download\/yes\/font-color\/FFFFFF\" width=\"100%\" height=\"128\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Ireland, along with the U.K., is among the most\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.mongabay.com\/2018\/01\/more-than-half-of-europes-forests-lost-over-6000-years\/\" data-wpel-link=\"internal\">ecologically denuded<\/a>\u00a0nations of the world. The island nation historically had\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.coillte.ie\/a-brief-history-of-irelands-native-woodlands\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\">80% forest cover<\/a>\u00a0before the advent of modern agriculture. Today, less than 2% of the land is native woodland, despite reforestation schemes, which have struggled in recent years. Daltun advocates rewilding as a better approach.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-279208 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/imgs.mongabay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2024\/02\/27042202\/Screenshot-2024-02-27-at-3.21.21-PM-768x512.png\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Part of the Irish Atlantic rainforest in the Beara Peninsula. Photo courtesy of Eoghan Daltun.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201c[A]ny pieces of land that have been left on farms for a significant length of time very often have reverted naturally back to wild native forests,\u201d he says. \u201c[O]nce I started seeing this, I started to realize that something like that would be so much better than actually planting trees.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-279211 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/imgs.mongabay.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2024\/02\/27043338\/Stookeennaloakareha_above_the_Healy_Pass_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_263396.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Classic view of Ireland. Photo by Richard Webb\/Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/mongabay-newscast\/id1155856616\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><strong>Apple<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/66SkV6VkkoeiLFMT2cgh04\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><strong>Spotify<\/strong><\/a>, and you can also listen to all episodes\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mongabay.com\/podcast\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0on the Mongabay website, or download our free app for\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/apps.apple.com\/us\/app\/id1524511006\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><strong>Apple<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/play.google.com\/store\/apps\/details?id=com.mongabay.android.mongabay&amp;hl=en_US\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"external noopener\" data-wpel-link=\"external\"><strong>Android<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0devices to gain instant access to our latest episodes and all of our previous ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eoghan Daltun joins the Mongabay Newscast to share his story and rewilding insights, which are detailed in his book,\u00a0An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey Into the Magic of Rewilding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3500140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,213530,213540],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3500120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-environment-featured","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3500120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3500120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3500140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3500120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3500120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3500120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}