The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Patrick back to screen with eco plea ‘Habitat’
Killarney Cinema screens hard-hitting film that lifts the lid on Irish forestry
COILLTE’S profit-driven forestry model is a deeply misguided approach that fails to take into account the real cost of coniferous monocultures to the environment.
That’s according to the latest feature documentary from Ballyheigue’s Patrick Brendan O’Neill simply entitled Habitat and focusing on a handful of ecologists committed to changing nothing less than the cultural mindset towards trees in this country.
It’s also a beautifully shot meditation on our relationship to the fast disappearing natural world, ranging from Glanteenasig on the Dingle Peninsula to the natural, biodiverse woodland of Manch in West Cork, a nature reserve in Tobago and the Austrian Alps.
At the very heart of the documentary is English artist Ian Wright – an immensely likeable character who has been battling hard for the natural world on a shoestring for decades.
One of the founders of the Manch woodland nearly 20 years ago, he lives half the year in Skibbereen and the other half in a paradisal slice of Tobago rainforest.
It’s the juxtaposition of the biodiversity of the broadleaf Manch wood and the Coillte-model forestry that powers this ecological plea.
As Ian puts it, the Sitka Spruce plantations cannot rightly even be classified as forests, entirely lacking, as they are, in the vast web of flora and fauna that give real woods their health and worth.
“If only Ian’s kind of vision was there when Coillte was set up in 1989, with Sitka spruce identified as the ‘workhouse’ of the forestry industry, comparing it to agriculture’s dairy cattle,” Patrick explained.
“This is dangerously simplistic, leading to a profit-obsessed model of plantations of no worth to the environment.
“The Government’s key climate target of planting 440 million trees by 2040 looks great on paper but, as 17-yearold Caoilinn O’Donoghue from Killarney, tells us in the documentary 70 per cent of this is going to be Sitka.
“Meanwhile, the Government is intent on planting 600,000 native trees on old Bord na Móna bogland which is just as wrongheaded as the bogs should be left regenerate.”
Manch wonderfully demonstrates the optimal approach in a model that can profit Coillte financially as well as the semiState’s public owners no end.
“Use the existing Sitka as a resource by all means, but Coillte need to start planting native and broadleaf trees in felled plantations now as a matter of urgency for our environment,” Patrick appealed.
Habitat is to screen at the Killarney Cineplex on Monday next, December 9, at 7pm and is being made freely available to the public by Patrick and the team.
Simply log onto www.habitatdoc.com and stream it or download it.
It has already screened in numerous locations from London to Cork and Dublin, with viewers posting about just how eye-opening they found the documentary.
Patrick said the team are also hoping that schools will pick up on it as an educational tool the better to inform the next generation on Ireland’s legacy of afforestation.