The Dunsany Rewilding Project is in the centre of my local exploration area. It is a beautiful part of the world. Rich green fields are cut through with quiet roads, old cottages and plenty of buzzards. While the routes can be a tad too linear for me over there, it has plenty of old tree cover breaking the monotony of its dead straight roads. Most of the trees mark the edge of the Dunsany estate and when Birdwatch Meath offered me the chance to visit the rewilding project I didn’t need asking twice.
I’ve always been curious about rewilding. It is a concept that is on the rise with the world’s first Rewilding Centre due to open in Scotland in 2023. When I started this blog the dolphins were back swimming in the canals of Venice. I was walking the roads listening to birds singing their little tweety hearts out. Everyone was on social media sharing how nature was healing. The great reset was happening and we were all going to change our ways. That lasted about as long as a drunk’s promise, but Dunsany had been doing this since 2014 and it appeared to be gaining momentum.
Randal Plunkett met us outside his castle with his dogs Beavis and Butthead. He is the 21st Baron of Dunsany which makes him, in his words, a French fecker. His ancestors were from Brittany instead of Britain and he knows all too well that this makes a difference. Throw in the fact that Cromwell hunted his lot just as much as the rest of us and we could forgive him most anything, even film-making, a trade that tends to attract egomaniacs.
Randal is the opposite of what you expect in a baron. He listens to heavy metal, enjoys taking pot shots at the government and has a healthy dislike of experts who use science to sell. In other words, your average Meathman. He inherited the land in 2011 and decided do something useful with it. A newly converted vegan, he made a stab at organic farming but wound it down. Every attempt at agriculture seemed to involve destruction of habitats, driving away wildlife and the constant pressure to control nature with chemicals. For someone who grew up playing in the woods pretending to be John Rambo, he might aswell have been spraying the fields with Agent Orange. In 2014 he made the decision to stop agriculture on 750 of his acres and let it go completely wild.
Rewilding is about allowing nature to regulate itself in order to increase wildlife comeback. There are different approaches. Planting wildflowers in the garden to attract more butterflies would be one way. Dunsany takes a more minimalist approach. They do as little as possible, something which the nobility have always been good at. Their family motto is “Festina Lente” which means to make haste slowly. Only places like Chernobyl or North Mayo, vast spaces that humans avoid for one reason or another, are more hands off.
As we set off on our walk Randal informed us that rewilding is the sexy version of conservation. There have been some amazing successes, like the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone Park. This altered the chemical make up of the rivers. Changes like this are the long goal of rewilding. There have also been some controversies, like Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands, where animals starved and the landscape looked like it was hit by famine. Not a great look. That is the thing about rewilding. Anything can happen. It tends to be more watch-and-wait than control-and-change.
Unsurprisingly, those in agriculture are not big fans of rewilding. They think it is irresponsible to let good food production land stand idle. I grew up on a farm so I understand that mindset. I can remember my Grandmother being outraged at the waste of good land when farmers first starting putting it aside for trees back in the 80s. I could feel that same shock when I looked at the first large field we walked through. You could see that this was once pristine green parkland that probably had grazing cows being tended by happy farmhands while ladies-in-waiting painted the view from the front of the castle. The cows are gone now. The rest of the picture only ever existed in my mind.
Apart from the stately trees, all that is left are scraggly hummocks of wispy grass. Looking at this was like looking at my bearded face in the mirror when I have let it go too long. It looked like it was crying out for the neat sweep of a blade. Still, I expected the field to be a mess of briars and thistles after being left for years, but some sort of weird order is visible. Grasses are reaching for the sun and these little hummocks that drive fear into the heart of precision engineered lawn growers are home to insects that have doubled since the project began.
Randal described how the local farmers laughed at his plans. They told him that the fields would be overrun with ragwort if he went without chemicals. They were right. He proudly added the title of Meath’s biggest farmer of ragwort to his name. But over time, the ragwort was replaced by other grasses. The field we were in had 3 types of grass when he started. Now there are nearly 30. He didn’t plant any of them. He still gets pockets of ragwort. They are part of the biodiversity and are a food source to cinnabar moth caterpillars. Randal clarified that Dunsany is a vegan rewilding project. That means that everything gets equal priority – insects and grasses along with the furry bunnies. This is Plunkett’s thesis – that nature will self regulate if left alone. To some this is dangerous talk, especially those who make money from nature.
We moved on towards a corner of the field, a heron flapping over our heads as we walked. We could see a herd of deer in the distance, looking at us in amazement, before sensibly taking off elsewhere. Randal warned us that poaching was his biggest problem. In 2019 he had to make 37 calls to police for criminal behaviour. People set traps for his birds. They get good money for them in Dubai. He takes a hardline approach – hence the new fencing and CCTV. He is more welcoming to those who help wildlife. His tennis court is being used as an otter holt by the animal hospital. Once the injured animals recover they are released in the grounds.
The problem with Meath, he pointed out, is that it has been farmed to death. Giant fields of green grass look lovely but the reality is that it is a barren monoculture. Hedgerows are disappearing. Trees are as rare as County Clare. Insects and animals need nature corridors to move, reproduce and keep the gene pool fresh. A land dependent on one or two main crops is never a good idea in a country with a history of famines. If a disease appears it will move quick if there is no biodiversity to block its path. Ash die-back is one such example and despite the fact that every farm that surrounds his land has ash die-back, the Dunsany fields do not. Covid is another example, one Randal knows too well after losing his mother to it.
In the corner of this field he has blocked the drains to rewet naturally. This corner is turning marshy in places. Water is life. It brings insects. New plants appear around the edges, ones he didn’t plant. The seeds were probably dropped by animals coming here to drink. The rare Black Poplar tree is growing here. This is Ireland’s only native poplar and it is in danger of going extinct. This, as he spelled out, is just as much our culture as our language or music.
We walk on across the field in single file bypassing the castle lake and heading towards his woodland area. He revealed that he sets out a walking track at the beginning of every season. Everyone in the estate follows the same track. This gives more space for creatures to breed. At the start of the project the estate had plenty of foxes and crows but that was the height of it. Now they have kite, snipe, stoats, pine martin, badgers. The first woodpecker in over a hundred years in Meath has been recorded here. So too has the corncrake. Overall there has been a 35% increase in birds. Each year, a different new species appears. Red squirrels are on the increase in the trees as the Pine Martins scour the grounds below for the invasive Grey squirrels.
The Dunsany woodland area is old and messy but like all good woods it has a winding trail through it. Coilte have suggested that it would be easier to manage if he controlled it. Instead, he lets trees compete for the light. The losers rot where they fall and become home to more little creatures. Nettles, thistles and hawthorn sprout around the bases and just like in the marshy area, new trees are appearing that he did not plant. These are woods that are constantly renewing themselves and the result is a canopied delight.
We pass by the River Skane that flows through the woods. Otters and eels have returned. This is where the woodpecker was reported. It is also where the government want to build the new Dublin – Navan train line – a suggestion which does not impress him as it would miss the heavily populated commuter towns of Ashbourne and Ratoath.
One of the most interesting things about the woods is that, like many woods in Ireland, invasive species like laurel and rhododendron have taken root. Unlike the national parks they do not take over. They grow much higher and let the light in. The floor beneath them is ordinary woodland soil, not the dead ground they usually leave behind. Even more interesting, in places there is evidence that something is at them. Nothing eats these plants but Randal finds torn leaves on the ground when he is out walking. Some of the larger laurels have been trampled and in some cases branches have been broken by brute force.
Randal’s theory is that the deer are attacking the invasive plants. He already noticed them attack the trees he tries to plant. They ignore the ones that seed naturally. He reckons there is some natural connection in the ground that they can sense. He is hoping that this could be the first real evidence that the biodiversity system is changing. We emerge from the woodland and see the deer ahead of us again. They give us the once over and hightail it off before we approach.
Back in another field, we pass by an old farm pen near a gate. It looks like it was used for pigs, or maybe sheep. Randal wants to keep this here to remind himself about Dunsany’s past. His grandfather had more than 100 cattle on the land back when the land was all about food production. His relative Horace Plunkett was a rancher in Wyoming. He learned the Scandinavian ways of cooperation there and brought them back to Ireland to form the first milk coops. Agriculture is as much a part of his genetics as his name. The problem back then was food production. The problem we face today is biodiversity.
We walk through another field out to the edge of the estate. We pass by a huge old tree that they call Jesus. It fell during a storm. They left it for ten years and it came back to life.
We enter another wooded section. The road is nearby and cars whizz by heading towards Dublin. We stop in a clearing surrounded by saplings and tall trees. He points to large wooden boxes that are attached to some of the trees. These, he informed us, are climate controlled houses for Irish bees. This is Bee Tinderland. He has 5 boxes of Irish bees here. The Douglas Fir boxes will keep them warm and also keep them away from the industrial farmed bees that are carrying diseases. Covid slowed down his plans but he hopes to eventually have 200 boxes of bees on the estate.
We make our way back to the front of Dunsany Castle. I can see that some of the windows are boarded up. There is a donation box on a table to help run the animal hospital. Randal gets no funding from anyone and I get the impression he is suspicious of the hidden costs that come with it. It is an interesting challenge that he has set for himself, one that might only get real results by the time the 22nd baron is running the estate. To give him credit, he has taken on the responsibility of creating an oasis of biodiversity in the centre of a centuries controlled landscape that the majority of us view as the picture of wildness already. The real challenge here is to change minds.
Randal has set himself up as the Morpheus of the Biodiversity Matrix. Will I take the red pill and rewild the front of my house? Probably not. But will I take the blue pill and delude myself into thinking that I am at one with nature as I tramp the roads? Maybe not so much anymore.
Google Maps: 53.53570845501081, -6.62087227343715
Distance: 3.4 km
Time: Two hours
Type of walk: Open fields, woodland trail
Views: Old farmland, woods
Animals: Deer, heron
Fungus of the Day: Wood ear mushrooms
Humans: 1 x baron, 30 x curious commoners
Score: 8/10
Would love to hear your views about this project.
