The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) will hold a special event entitled ‘Rewilling for People and Nature’ this Saturday March 25th at the Corlea Trackway Centre in Co. Longford to discuss rewilding and the enormous potential this has for addressing the climate and biodiversity emergency.
The IWT has chosen the Corlea Trackway Centre as it is an important hub for celebrating the cultural importance of Ireland’s peatland heritage. It is also within the area of the ‘Shannon Wilderness Park’ which is a landscape-scale nature restoration project originally envisaged by local people as an after use for the bogs once turf-cutting ended. The event hopes to promote the original vision of the Shannon Wilderness Park for the area of the worked out bogs and Lough Ree which could be one of the greatest landscape restoration projects in Europe. It would be the largest area of land dedicated to nature recovery in Ireland with immense amenity value for local people as well as provide material benefits in addressing the biodiversity and climate crises.
The event on Saturday will include talks from IWT Campaign Officer Pádraic Fogarty on the benefits of
rewilding, Sue Moles, local ranger with the National Parks and Wildlife Service on the existing and potential wildlife of the area and Alan McDonnell of
Trees for Life and the
Affric Highlands rewilding project in Scotland.
The IWT believes that rewilding is among the quickest, cheapest and most effective approaches to both the climate and biodiversity crises and should be embraced on a landscape scale. We want to make sure that rewilding works for people as well as nature and we look forward to hearing from the community in this part of Longford on Saturday.
