Is Ireland really all that green? Ecologically speaking, the answer is no, says Eoghan Daltun, a sculptor who restored a patch of native rainforest in the Beara Peninsula, on the country’s rugged southwestern coast.
“Ireland really coasts on its reputation as the Emerald Isle,” Mr. Daltun said in a recent interview at his West Cork home. “There is this perception that because it rains a lot in Ireland, and everything is green, and everything grows easily, that nature is doing great here.”
But nature in Ireland is not doing great. Earlier this month, the country’s Environmental Protection Agency published a report that rated Ireland’s environmental health as “poor.” Thousands of years ago, 80 percent of Ireland was forested. Trees now cover just 11 percent of the country, one of the lowest rates in Europe, and are predominately nonnative Sitka spruce. Native trees cover just 1 percent of the land.
Biodiversity is also suffering. Ireland may have millions of acres of brilliant green fields dotted with cows and sheep, but that land is largely grass monocultures. “These places are biological deserts,” Mr. Daltun said. “There is nothing there for nature.”
What’s more, he said, fault can no longer be laid at the feet of the British.
“The thing about Ireland is, we’ve had this long tendency to blame the English and colonialism,” Mr. Daltun continued. “That just doesn’t wash anymore, because Ireland has been independent for more than a century and things have gotten worse.”
Mr. Daltun is trying to change that. He chronicled his rewilding of his 73 acres in his 2022 book, “An Irish Atlantic Rainforest,” and just published “The Magic of an Irish Rainforest,” a photographic compendium of rare pockets of wild nature found on the island.
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