Pádraic Fogarty: There are signs of positive change at Wild Nephin
Wild Nephin: Native woodland establishment behind deer and sheep proof fencing. Pictures: Pádraic Fogarty
The north-west of Mayo is Ireland’s least populated area and is a vast expanse of land with few roads and lots of wet, inaccessible bog. On its website, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) refers to the area as “unspoiled wilderness”. However, far from being ‘unspoiled’, the landscape has been seriously degraded over many decades by a combination of sheep grazing, turf-cutting and plantation forestry.
In 1998, the State announced the creation of the Ballycroy National Park while in 2013, to great fanfare 11,000 ha of Coillte forestry next door were proclaimed as the ‘Wild Nephin Wilderness Area’. We were told at the time that “over the next 15 years the Wilderness Management Group will begin a process of rewilding” where the conifers would be ‘remodelled’, drainage channels blocked, rhododendron removed, and human intervention ceased.
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