Born To Rewild

Daniel Alvey 26MAR21

aunched a little over a month ago, it’s pretty impressive that, on this sunny, snowy and, eh, rainy Daffodil Day, the ReWild Wicklow petition is just reaching 10,000 signatures.

The brainchild of Alvey siblings Daniel, Ian, Simon and Enya, the goal is to bring back native trees to the county.

“Anyone who regularly visits the Wicklow Mountains will agree that it is a National Park in name only,” said Daniel at the time. “In truth, the landscape is dominated by Sitka spruce plantations that are regularly clear-felled for commercial gain. Anyone who walks through the deathly silence of one of these monoculture woods will know that these plantations do not contribute to biodiversity or the visitor experience.”

And that’s why the Alvey’s petition is calling on the Minister of State for Heritage, Malcolm Noonan, to prioritise the removal of Sitka spruce plantations from within the protected boundaries of the park and implement the restoration of native woodland and other native habitats.

A move pretty much everyone in Wicklow would appear to agree with. Bar the odd social media crank, of course.

With step two involving both presenting the petition to the Minister – and hopefully getting to discuss the proposals whilst there – the Alveys are also setting up a group of like-minded locals and experts under the ReWild Wicklow banner, to help move the campaign forward with some joined-up thinking.

Encouragingly, Coillte – the State-owned commercial forestry business – have set up an off-shoot, Coillte Nature, which shares the aims of ReWild Wicklow in helping reach the 2030 EU target of 30% of land being dedicated to biodiversity.

Which is why we caught up with the bould Daniel to find out more, over at Coillte’s Newtown HQ this afternoon. Just before the snow. And the rain.

Once again, you can sign that petition right here. And you can keep up with the ReWild Wicklow campaign on Facebook here.