Woodlands to be restored in Donoughmore

An eight-acre site near Donoughmore has been purchased by a not-for-profit organisation working to establish and conserve permanent native woodland in Ireland. Hometree, a restoration charity, has plans to restore 4,000 acres of wild woodland along Ireland’s west coast, and the Donoughmore site is its first in county Cork.

The site will be used as an educational facility to host school and college groups as well as a showcase location for professional farmers to see the ways in which they can integrate native trees into intensive farming systems.

Speaking about the acquisition, Ray Ó FoghluHometree’s Farm Programmes Coordinator said: “Some of the best land in Ireland is in county Cork, the heart of dairy country. It isn’t feasible for farmers to block out whole areas with trees.

“However, there are a variety of ways of integrating native trees that actually work for the farm system and we will be using our new location in Donoughmore to demonstrate the advantages. It can simply be planting lines or groups of trees in corners of fields or scattering individual trees throughout the pasture,” he explained.

“Native trees have mutual benefits for the environment, for water quality and for biodiversity. There are also benefits for cattle who can shelter under the trees, they can also browse the foliage which gives them minerals they can’t get elsewhere at different times of the year,” he added.

Historically, up to 80 per cent of Ireland was covered in wild forests of birch, pine and oak. Today only one per cent remains and fragments of rainforests cling on in gullies, cliff faces and secluded islands. Hometree’s Wild Atlantic Rainforest Project will stretch from Cork to Donegal over eight sites.

The nature restoration charity now has a full-time seed collector. Arborist Jeremy Turkington visits remote valleys, sheltered hollows and ravines along Ireland’s west coast to collect rare and ancient seed specimens. In recent months he has picked Guelder Rose berries in the Gearagh in north-west Cork.

Hometree began as a small community garden project in the winter of 2014. Hometree has now planted over 150,000 pioneer trees - like scots pine, willow and alder - while hundreds of people have contributed time and resources to the vision of incorporating more trees into the Irish landscape, bringing all the benefits that woodlands create.