The Woodland League is a not-for-profit independent community-based organisation , non-denominational, non-political advocates of Agenda 21 and an all-Ireland body. Our aim is to restore the relationship between people and their woodlands. One of the founders, Ted Cooke, started the first environmental group in Ireland in 1984 – the Macroom Environmental Group – which is still going strong. We came together through the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification initiative whereby Coillte were seeking an ‘eco-label’ verification to satisfy the Irish state’s commitments to Sustainable Forest Management under the Helsinki and Lisbon agreements. FSC is an Agenda 21-based process and with this understanding, we engaged in this consultation process, along with many other communities and NGOs.

The Convention on Biological Diversity 1993, which the state also signed up to, whose definition of sustainability emphasises the protection of native flora and fauna in situ / place of origin – particularly the native trees of any place (being nature’s highest achievement in the plant kingdom), states that native forests must be granted highest priority for protection, conservation and enhancement. All stability in nature of soil, air and water is conferred by native trees.

Our experience in this FSC process was frustrating, leading us to create the Woodland League as a means of better serving the numerous communities and NGOs that we were liaising with and who were also experiencing difficulties with the process.

We realised that there was a need for an umbrella / focus organisation to highlight and communicate the new awareness of the benefits of ‘continuous-cover’, multi-use native woodlands with a view to creating new community native tree nurseries and woodlands. To this end we are creating a central data-base of information on the historical records of Ireland’s great forest tradition and culture as well as up-to-the-minute information and developments. We are also making communities aware of their rights and entitlements under Agenda 21 to clean air, soil and water via increased native woodlands.

We are also interested in promoting research and discussion on the Brehon laws by which Irish society operated until the fall of the Gaelic order. These laws managed our common heritage for the benefit of all, these were time-tested rules based on respected values. There were checks and balances and there was an effective system of enforcement.

Ted Cooke and Andrew St.Ledger are involved in promoting native trees (tree lore, planting, crafts, history and general information on the benefits of native trees) through the ‘Heritage in Schools’ scheme which is administered through primary schools. Ted Cooke has been doing this for 21 years. Both are also engaged in widespread national events (e.g. Heritage Week, Biodiversity days, CELT – Centre for Environmental Living and Training - ‘Weekend in the Woods’, exhibitions of craft and carving at heritage events with Muintir na Coille – Coppice and Allied Trades Association of Ireland, etc). We aim to share resources and create relationships with other like-minded NGOs and we wish to promote the concept of ‘cooperation’ for which we use the analogy of the wooden barrel made by coopers to explain that each part of the barrel is weak on its own and only when it is in the hoop does it have strength. Agenda 21 promotes this idea of partnership and working together as opposed to competition which is the destructive order of today’s economic reality.

One of the members, Ted Cooke, pioneered the concept of ‘treestoration’ projects – one of which is in Broadford, Co.Limerick, in a one hectare quarry site which was left to the people of Broadford by Lord Muskerry of Springfield Castle in the 19th century. The quarry came to be used as a local dump and, as such, became heavily polluted. In the 1990s, local developers wished to build on the site but the community opposed this and exercised their rights via Agenda 21 and a plan created by Ted Cooke to convert the quarry into a native tree arboretum as an education resource for the local school, with the added benefit of the power of the trees to clean up the pollution. First a nursery was established in situ and gradually all twenty native species were groomed for planting on the site. This project became a milennium project and the first flora and fauna count was taken at the start of the project. This count came to 65 species. By 2004 the count had increased to over 400 species with a 15ft canopy. The project has been a huge success in restoring a degraded public space using nature.

The other project was in Omagh, Co.Tyrone, and Ted Cooke working as a consultant to the Northern Ireland Woodland Trust, designed a six-acre treestoration project including all twenty native species. This was a cross-community milennium project.

These are two of only four sites where the public can view all the native species in one place.

The Woodland League also initiates walks and talks throughout the country promoting native woodland heritage. We also have a weekly e-mail newsletter. We also actively lobby to change Irish forestry policy through our petition and we do represent a number of Irish farmers who approached us through frustration and dissatisfaction with Forest Service advice on planting of their lands (they wished to plant native trees and they felt that they were being steered towards non-native conifers).

We are providing web space to communities to highlight local forestry concerns (i.e. illegal tree felling and unsustainable use of forest lands for developments).

We are currently researching the concept of ‘treesponsibility’ which is a successful English project whereby citizens who, like many today, feel disempowered in regard to trying to fix the current ecological crisis which is upon us. Citizens can actually be empowered to offset their own CO2 contributions to climate change via planting native trees. This involves local schoolchildren doing the maths to calculate how much CO2 each family is producing in one year (from household and car fuel bills, etc). When the CO2 figure is arrived at, a number of trees to be planted is allocated to each family, enabling them to become ‘carbon neutral’. (It is estimated that one two-year old native broadleaf tree will absorb approximately half a ton of CO2 per year). Therefore an average family of two adults and two children are producing four tons of CO2 per year, then this family, by planting eight saplings per year, are effectively carbon-neutral. Research from the Energy Saving Trust, the Institute for European Environment Policy and the National Society for Clean Air produced a paper called ‘Fuelling road transport – implications for energy policy’. If 25% of UK agricultural land was planted with indigenous wood crops, converted to methanol, ethanol or hydrogen, this could, in the long term, satisfy most, if not all, UK road transport fuel demand.

Edinburgh University created a computer model for Birmingham, the most congested and polluted English city, that showed that, if every available green space in Birmingham was planted with native Ash, they would have a 25% reduction in pollution. (1998).

We are also actively helping to establish native tree nurseries working with foresters, landowners, NGOs, community groups, etc. We have a large network of experts to call upon for information and advice in Ireland and abroad (multi-cultural) all fully supportive of our initiatives. Andrew St.Ledger has worked with Zulu wood carvers in 2004 in Durban on a large arts project called Tangentsya. The theme of Andrew’s specific project was a conversation between Africa and Ireland to which he gave the title ‘Ukumbisana / Meitheal’ (from the Zulu word for ‘coming together’ and the Irish word for a community work-party). The context for this conversation was the native trees of Africa and Ireland and together they created a sculpture reflecting this which is being used for educational purposes to foster a connection back to native African trees. This project / conversation is to continue with UN funding over coming years.

The Woodland League have been operating without funding, however we are now actively considering accessing ethical funding with no strings attached.