With increasing awareness around the need to protect and enhance biodiversity, many people and communities are wondering what is the best way to do this. The first steps often entail creating ‘no mow’ areas, wildflower meadows for pollinators and insect hotels. Although these are good starting points, their impact is still relatively low.

The key to reversing biodiversity loss is restoring complexity and resilience back into natural ecosystems. This is what a Biodiversity Haven achieves by creating the optimum conditions for soil health and introducing a diverse mix of native species suitable for those soil conditions. After that it’s really about leaving it alone and allowing the Biodiversity Haven grow and flourish to become a natural habitat and ‘wild’ space.

People often wonder why we plant so many trees close together - surely planting them two or three meters apart would ‘look’ better? However this is a very human way of looking at it. In natural afforestation, a forest clearing for example, saplings always grow densely together. Living Woodlands uses the internationally recognized Miyawaki method of ecosystem restoration, which we have adapted for the conditions and species here in Ireland. This method accelerates the process of ecological restoration by imitating as closely as possible what would occur in nature and leads to 20 times more biodiversity than standard planting practices.

In more conventional tree planting operations (including government subsidised native forestry), the amount of tree species tends to be quite low - often only four to five. We plant a higher amount of tree species - from ten to fifteen in each forest. There are many native species which aren’t usually planted mainly due to lack of supply or just out of habit. This limits the biodiversity and resilience of a forest. This is why we include more unusual native trees like: alder buckthorn, crab apple, Scot’s pine, purging buckthorn, spindle, yew, elder, guilder rose and whitebeam. However we only plant trees that are suited to the soil in any given area following best ecological advice.

Ecosystem restoration means assisting in the recovery of ecosystems that have been degraded or destroyed as well as protecting those that are still intact. This basically means facilitating biodiversity and complexity to establish in the system by regenerating the soil and introducing the right variety of native tree species. This is done as best as possible to mimic natural afforestation. Once this initial intervention is complete, the woodland is allowed to develop and evolve naturally with minimal intervention and management.

Tree planting is the cheapest and most reliable way (on land) to directly sequester carbon from the atmosphere. Unfortunately many large carbon offsetting schemes plant non-native monoculture forests leading to negative ecological consequences. We do not support this approach. Why?

Resilience of our ecosystems is crucially important in their capacity to survive the challenges presented by climate change over the next century. Monoculture systems are much more vulnerable systems. At Living Woodlands we have a larger vision of restoring the health of local ecosystems and creating corridors of wildness across Ireland. We believe creating wild and dynamic woodlands and forests is the best way to ensure a stable and resilient carbon sink into the future.