Setting the Land Free - by Eoghan Daltun (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Rewilding Ireland, award-winning author and rewilder Eoghan Daltun explores the state of rewilding in Ireland, as the beginnings of a mass movement - the like of which has been successfully modelled in Scotland - grows in impact and stature. As he considers the radical shift that is needed in our relationship with our natural world, he takes to the high roads and by-roads to meet with those at the forefront of change.

The book provides an inspiring vision for rewilding in an Irish context, creating refuges for wild nature in a landscape that has been given over almost entirely to human extractive processes, such as industrialised farming or monoculture plantation forestry. From those involved in bog ecosystem restoration, to native species reintroduction, to rewilding at sea, forest rewilding and much more, Eoghan meets with the pioneers at the cutting edge of the transformed relationship with nature required for the future of diverse species and habitats, and for ecological balance.

A courageous book that forges a vision that is as inspiring as it is urgent.

About the Author

Eoghan Daltun is a sculpture conservator, a farmer, an author and, above all, a rewilder.

Reared in Dublin, he has travelled widely, as well as living abroad in London, Paris and Prague. He spent seven years studying sculpture in Carrara, Tuscany.

In 2009, he sold the cottage in Kilmainham he had rebuilt mostly single-handed from a ruin - dating back to at least the 1750s - using the original stone. The proceeds went to buy a long-abandoned 73-acre farm overlooking the Atlantic near Eyeries on the Beara Peninsula, West Cork. Much of the land was covered in wild native forest which, although very beautiful, was ecologically wrecked by severe overgrazing and invasion by a host of alien plant species.

Over the years since, Eoghan has brought life in all its explosive vibrancy back to the land, with new temperate rainforest spontaneously forming where previously there was only barren grass. Restoring such an incredibly rich ecosystem has taken him on a fantastic voyage of discovery, which he charted in his award-winning memoir An Irish Atlantic Rainforest: A Personal Journey into the Magic of Rewilding. Rewilding most of the land, and High Nature Value farming the rest, has given him plenty of time to reflect deeply on the ecological crisis unfolding at terrifying speed all around us, and its solutions.
Eoghan lives on the farm with his two sons, Liam and Seánie, their collie dog, Charlie, and five Dexter cows: Maggie, Gertrude, Amber, Nelly and Minnie. The Magic of an Irish Rainforest: A Visual Journey is his second book.