Eoghan Daltun 🌍

I'm *wildly* excited to announce that my new book, 'Setting the Land Free – Visions of a Rewilded Ireland', will be published by Hachette on 27 August. We have a stark choice re our collapsing nature: the usual timid, token gestures, or real, gutsy ambition. This book makes the case for the latter.

Psychologically, we're living in very hard times for all who care deeply about science, empathy, equity, nature, and rights for all citizens of the planet, human or otherwise. Find strength, solace, and community in like-minded others, positive action, and in Mother Earth 🌎

Those who think nature has no inherent value, that it's just there to be exploited, also tend to see other people who are different to them in the same way: women, people of colour, Muslims, Jews, gays, trans, indigenous, Palestinians, even children... the list goes on and on. It's *all* connected.

Lough Neagh and its one out-flowing river, the Bann (pictured), are a warning of where Ireland's water bodies are headed without action on excess nutrients: beautifully rich ecosystems turned into slimey, dying, stinking, open sewers. All so a few people can make money pumping out livestock shit.

Give me a wild, tangled forest ecosystem over tamed parkland every time. One expands the mind's horizons. In the other, they shrink.

Silver-washed fritillary on knapweed. Like most so-called 'weeds', knapweed is in fact an absolute *superstar* native plant for pollinators and other insect life.

Reflections of an Irish Atlantic rainforest.

The whole world over, those political forces who insist *they* are 'moderate', 'reasoned', 'a safe pair of hands', but when in power do all they can to defend big money, and block or delay serious action on gross wealth inequality, climate and eco-collapse: these are the real extremists.

With our once stable climate now collapsing year on year, this should be happening *everywhere*. Make it economically viable for people, and miracles will happen.

I have it on *excellent* authority that this semi-upright stone deep in the rainforest is almost certainly a Bronze Age standing stone, so possibly dating back to when the first tree clearances for farming began in this area, around 3,750 years ago. Now the rainforest is back.

The release date for my new book, Setting the Land Free – Visions of a Rewilded Ireland, has been put back to the 10th of September. There'll be a launch in @waterstones.bsky.social Cork on the evening of the 9th, with the great @seanronayne.bsky.social speaking. Do come along if you can!

This somehow passed over my head (I've been insanely busy), but *deeply* shocking that the @social-democrats.bsky.social and (less surprising) Sinn Féin voted with the government to pass the Critical Infrastructure Act in June, undermining climate action. www.friendsoftheearth.ie/publications...

For me, it's far from this simple. We've been wiping nature out for a very long time. I believe that *can* change, but only if we're honest about our long-standing destructive relationship with the rest of life on Earth.

Regular immersion in wild nature is a basic human right that's denied to far too many, with disastrous consequences for mental health. Rewilding isn't only a vital lifeline for nature, but for *us*.