Eoghan Daltun 🌍
@irishrainforest
Author of award-winning bestseller An Irish Atlantic Rainforest. Over 17 years rewilding our 73-acre farm on the Beara Peninsula, West Cork. In love with Earth's biosphere.
Walking in our farm's rainforest with the melting heat of these days, I am filled with such inexpressible anger at what is being done to our once stable climate. The richest 1% are actively, knowingly, and uncaringly sabotaging the future for all of us, and for the rest of the planet's life.
Reaching up through thick gorse and heather, a wild baby oak. If we choose to give it space and time, life finds a way. #Rewilding
In a healthy Irish rainforest like ours 👇, even in a drought, enough moisture is retained from times of heavy rain to be fire resistant. By contrast, artificially high levels of grazing eliminate the natural understorey and ground flora, so flammable (when dry) grasses move in. Cause ... effect.
With news of a major fire in Killarney National Park, here's an image from 2021, when large swathes, incl. trees, were incinerated. Just as the current scorching heat is not natural, nor are these regular conflagrations, caused by decades of severe overgrazing by invasive sika and goats. How so? 🧵
The 'high top' of our mountain commonage might be only 263m above sea level, but on a good day, it can feel like the top of the world. Just a shame that the crazy rich rainforest that would naturally be here is entirely missing, due to sheep. But it and other habitats could return, via rewilding.
A beautiful demoiselle, showing off its delicate wing composition and resplendent colour. The larvae, which live in rivers, are highly vulnerable to oxygen depletion mainly due to agricultural (but also household) waste, causing the species to become rare across much of its European range.
After attending the brilliant Fit-Up Theatre performance of 'Mary's Hopes and Dreams' on Bere Island last night, we then managed to miss the last ferry back to the mainland, thus home. Being peak season, all beds were booked out, so this was the night's luxury lodging. www.fit-uptheatrefestival.com
How many Irish people have ever experienced the wonder of old-growth natural forest in our own country? Given that it now covers less than 0.1% (<1/1,000th) of Ireland, likely only a tiny few. What a terribly sad thought. Allowing surviving remnants to expand naturally should be a *top* priority.
If you have no garden of your own, maybe you can help make a local community space go wild. Nature will thank you for it, in ways you can't even begin to imagine.
Let your garden grow wild, and your daily life will be infused with ever-changing loveliness and magic, full of butterflies and birdsong.
The deeply primeval feel of a relatively intact Irish rainforest is impossible to communicate. The only way to know it is to spend quiet time in one.
Rewilding land freed from animal agriculture could remove around 8 billion tonnes of CO₂ each year, roughly one-fifth of current global direct GHG emissions, or about the same as eliminating all emissions from the U.S. and EU combined. That's MASSIVE. iffs.earth/living-repor...
A focused shot of the ground-hugging leaves. These are coated in a sticky substance in which midges and other small insects are trapped and then slowly digested, providing extra nutrient intake in the very infertile boggy places where the plant grows.
There's plenty of large-flowered butterwort in my place, but I've only ever seen this one, pale butterwort, a few times. It too catches and digests insects. Its natural range extends down the Atlantic along the western coasts of Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, and Portugal to Morocco in Africa.
If you've ever seen 'cuckoo spit' (a foamy substance) on a plant, this amazing insect may well be the cause. In their nymph stage, alder spittlebugs create a bubbly cocoon for protection from predators.
Ireland's real 'forty shades of green' is a temperate rainforest.
That post (and the blue tick) are on Bluesky. Like myself (apart from today's post), @ketanjoshi.co hasn't used X for a long time.
After 18 months of not engaging on Twitter (X), I went back there solely to ask this question. I won't be bothering to respond to the replies.
Spangles of orchids, bog asphodel, eyebright, selfheal and other wildflowers, all buzzing with pollinators in the sunshine. Rewilding isn't only about bringing back trees, but *all* our native species and habitats.
Can you see it? The difference between full-on rewilding and, behind, sheep-farmed land. The difference between life and death.
'Landedgentry tweedus' There are loads more 'species' in 'Irish Wildlife', bringing back another time. It's hard to imagine a book like this being published now: my guess is it would be seen as just far too offensive to too many. But being able to laugh at ourselves is a supremely healthy thing!
'Bishopricus magnus' The loss of the almost absolute power the church wielded over Irish society not so long ago seems hard to believe, thinking back to those times.
'Executivus senior' More than 4 decades on, the big money, 'big man', culture still prevails in Ireland, to the detriment of pretty much all the rest of us.
'Busarus rex' If you remember Dublin bus conductors, you'll remember this species and its familiar greeting, 'Wherrayagointa'. You might even remember the 'Go ahead' ritual (I do!).
'Spucus hystericus' SPUC (the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child) were a fanatically Catholic anti-abortion group, famous for being supposedly 'pro-life' while in favour of the death penalty.