When Two Hemispheres Collide: Where to now for rewilding in Ireland?  

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have just been to visit one of the most enchanting islands, County Kerry, Ireland. Everyone outside of where I live talks about Valentia, Puffin, Skellig, and the Blasket Islands, but for those of us in the know, and in particular those of us who live at the southern tip of the Iveragh Peninsula along Kenmare Bay, it is islands such as Scarriff, Deenish, Moylaun, Two-Headed, the Bull and Cow Rocks, Sherky, and Rossdohan that hold the most fascination. Dotted along large shallow inlets and bays, across their range, they consist of reefs, perennial vegetated stony banks and cliffs, salt meadows, sea caves, and dry and wet heath. They are home to nesting seabird colonies that include Northern gannets, Manx shearwaters, storm petrels, common, Arctic, and sandwich terns, numerous gull species, shags and cormorants, and auks, including puffins, razorbills, and guillemots. Dive underwater, and you will be exposed to countless species that live on and amongst kelp forests, seagrass, and maerl beds. Frequently visited by whale and dolphin species, shark species such as basking sharks, resident seal populations, and otters, these islands are generally left to nature. The flora of the islands is, in fact, carpets laden with wet and dry heath species, including heather, bell heather, western gorse, bracken, and bilberry. Flowering plants include bluebells, sheep’s-bit, creeping willow, purple moor grass, thrift, scurvy grass, rock samphire, rock sea-spurrey, sea aster, and sea campion, to name a few. Many of the habitats and species mentioned are listed in Annex 1 of the E.U. Habitats Directive.  

Of all the islands named above, it is the enchanted island of Rossdohan that tells one of the most interesting stories, a story that has not only shaped its flora but also its insect fauna. Like the other islands mentioned, Rossdohan, a privately owned island, began life as the other islands did, shaped by thousands of years of climate change, from the post-Ice Age to periods of warming and cooling and warming again. Its distinct maritime flora and fauna primarily evolved after the end of the last Ice Age (circa 11,500 years ago). In modern times, it is the presence of the Gulf Stream’s warming waters that has had the most enduring influence on it. 

Today, the resultant microclimate of Rossdohan seems unfamiliar amongst the climate of the more exposed islands further out to sea. In the 1870s, the island was bought by Samuel Heard, a retired surgeon who had worked in India. Inspired by the Madras Horticultural Gardens in India, he set about planting the seemingly barren island with Southern Hemisphere exotic species, first by screening the exposed site with plants such as native gorse and then with hedges of Chilean Escalonias and Rhododendron hybrids. One of the most successful shelter plant species was the Australian Blackwood—Acacia melanoxylon. These were followed by plantings of Monterey Pine and Monterey Cypress. Australian tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) were joined by the Silver Tree Fern (Cyathea dealbata) and Eucalyptus species. 

Heard built a fine house on the island, and while he got to see his gardens develop and mature, a year after he died (1921), the house was burned down in an act that was designed to rid the area of a strong Anglo-Irish presence in post-independent Ireland. A new house designed by architect Michael Scott was built in 1946, but this too was consumed by fire in an accident in 1955. The house and island, then owned by the Walker family of Dublin, brought a new lease of life to the gardens, and by the 1970s, the gardens were in their prime. In 1991, the island was then sold to an East German, Manfred Wolfert. Upon his death in 2001, the gardens reverted and now, in 2024, stand as a wilderness—a wild testimony to its exotic past, with species such as Eucalyptus, sub-tropical evergreen trees such as Kratom, the coniferous Rimu, and Bhutan pine standing tall.

My first time visiting these gardens was in 1985. They were beautifully manicured and thriving. Having not traveled to Southeast Asia or Australia and New Zealand, I was seeing these plant species, including exotic trees and tree ferns, for the very first time. The one thing that has remained with me in the intervening decades was the scent coming from the plantation, and to this day, when I walk from the island’s semi-natural woodlands into the gardens, I can smell the distinctive difference. The other really interesting observation is the presence of the unarmed stick insect—native to New Zealand, it can be found here.

The island is currently owned by the Parknasilla Estate, and while it is well known for its sub-tropical planted gardens, two-thirds of the 132-acre site are largely dominated by native Irish trees and plants. Trees include oak, ash, hazel, willow, birch, alder, holly, hawthorn, and crab apple. Gorse and heather are found on the exposed seaward-facing land banks. Woodbine and ground flora such as ivy, tutsan, lesser celandine, wood anemone, and purple loosestrife fill the woodland edges. Before abandonment, a number of old meadows provided ground cover and consisted of sweet meadow grass, buttercup, dandelion, ribwort plantain, trefoil, and yellow rattle. Pockets still remain. In summer, orchids are found here too.

Amongst the stands of native Irish trees, mosses, bryophytes, and ferns cover the ground and lower tree trunks. Epiphytic ferns and lichens can be found growing high up on tree trunks and branches. Branches draped with tree lungwort, a large leafy lichen, which is a composite species consisting of algae, fungi, and a bacterium, are found here too. Its presence is indicative of old woodland, with pure air and water. Their range throughout Europe is disappearing rapidly, and the western part of Ireland remains a stronghold for the species. Finding it is a delight! Also present on the island are stands of introduced trees that include beech, sycamore, horse, and sweet chestnut. These species were introduced into Ireland from the 15th to the 17th centuries and have naturalized the landscape since. Sitka spruce is found here too. It was introduced to Ireland in the 1830s and now represents some 40% of the total forest cover in plantations throughout Ireland.

Since the first forest clearings by Mesolithic peoples (circa 7,000 years ago), tree cover in Ireland has been dramatically reduced. From 4,500 years ago to the present, native woodlands now account for less than 1% of the cover left. This fragmentation does not sit well within a landscape that is seeing massive declines in biodiversity, from insects to birds and bats. Pressure from farming, land clearances, planting of non-native Sitka spruce that creates dead zones that, in turn, reduce biodiversity, hedgerow clearances, and pollution of our waterways are all helping to contribute to this downward trend. Add to this mix the extent to which non-native plants have colonized and outcompeted our native species, and you get a picture of a landscape that is changing irreversibly. Garden escapes, including Crocosmia (native to South Africa), have taken over roadside verges; fuchsia has colonized our hedgerows. Along riverbanks, non-native Japanese Knotweed has taken over entire river courses, shading out native wildflowers. Since it was introduced to Ireland in Victorian times, Himalayan Balsam has taken over riverbanks too. Just like Japanese Knotweed, when it loses its leaves in autumn, it contributes to soil erosion. Gunnera (a native of South America) also results in adverse shading out of native wildflowers. In our national parks and, in particular, the jewel in the crown, Killarney National Park, Rhododendron ponticum infestation, along with grazing animals such as sika deer, feral goats, and sheep, are creating the conditions whereby the natural regeneration of the oak woods has stalled.

There is a lot of work to be done if we are to undo the legacy of the past. The rewilding movement, started in North America as a large-scale effort to protect habitats and corridors for the movement of wildlife, had, by 2011, spread to Europe. By 2021, it had taken root in Ireland. 

In 2010, when I began researching for my book ‘Wild Derrynane’—a visual natural history of the Skellig Coast (published August 2023)—I had consulted the National Archives’ photographic records for the Derrynane area. Most of the black-and-white images at that time were taken during the latter half of the 19th century and show a coastal landscape that was mostly farmed. Tree cover at that time was mostly limited to around the house, its gardens, and the adjacent Dunraven Estate. Looking at the 1829 published, six-inch Ordnance Survey maps confirmed this. When Derrynane House was finally taken into public ownership and opened to the public in 1967, the formal gardens were extended and, just like Rossdohan, planted with exotics that include a South American plant collection.  As my research continued, I realized fairly soon that much of the previously farmed land had reverted to native woodland. Is this an example of rewilding in action? I think so. Many of the promoters of rewilding in Ireland believe that if we just leave the land to itself, it will return to its native state. It certainly seems that the complex relationships between soil, biome, and woodland regeneration may indeed benefit from us doing nothing. But then again, there may be instances where achieving woodland self-regulation, requires a helping hand. This is certainly the case with Killarney National Park. 

As for where we are today? We are definitely in a state of flux where nature restoration requires legislation, a change in policy at European and national levels, a commitment that is compensatory and beneficial to those who manage the land, and a participatory role for members of the public. 

We may well have to live side by side with our subtropical southern hemisphere gardens and see them for what they are, as relics of a 19^th-century gardening obsession. As I stand at the woodland fringes of Derrynane, I hear the high pitch ‘tssst tssst’ of a flock of beautiful long-tailed tits. These tiny birds need healthy woodland habitats. 

The future is in our hands.

Vincent Hyland, based in Derrynane, Ireland, is a passionate environmentalist, multimedia artist, and educator dedicated to preserving and celebrating the natural beauty of the Kerry coastline. A renowned expert on the coastal ecosystems of Derrynane, he pioneered Ireland’s first nature trails of their kind: the Derrynane Seashore Nature Trail and the Wild Derrynane Underwater Nature Trail for scuba divers. Hyland also played a key role in the establishment of the Kerry UNESCO International Dark Sky Reserve and authored Wild Derrynane, a natural history book illustrated by his photographs.

For more information: 
Wild Derrynane: A Natural History of Ireland’s Greater Skellig Coast and Kerry’s Marine National Park by Vincent Hyland

Photographs and video by Gayil Nalls and John Steele