Tree Planting in Rossport.

mayo | environment | event notice Saturday September 30, 2006 00:56 by The Woodland League

Cad a dhéanfaimíd feasta gan Adhmaid?

Saturday 30th September at 4pm near Bellanaboy, Co. Mayo.

The Woodland League, an NGO dedicated to restoring the relationship between people and their native woodlands, will plant a native Yew tree between Rossport and Bellanaboy. Andrew St Ledger, the PRO. will give a talk on the tradition of Sacred Trees in Ireland, of which the Yew was very prominent. Mayo itself is Mhaigh Eo in Irish - the Plain of the Yew.

This Saturday marks the first anniversary of the release of the Rossport Five from prison. Weather permitting, this event will be followed by music and a barbecue at Bellanaboy.

This will be done with the Rossport community including the Rossport Five and the Shell to Sea campaign in order to commemorate Michael Davitt's centenary year and acknowledge the Rossport Five's contribution towards keeping the spirit of the Land League alive. The five's peaceful resistance to bad law and bad governance, while all the time asserting their rights to the proper sustainable development and protection of their community, gives us a timely reminder Davitts ideas are still relevant today.

The wise use and management of our natural resources should be for the benefit of the people. The Woodlandleague will highlight the unsustainable use of the public forest resource by Coillte, the Irish Forestry Board, to facilitate a multinational with an appalling track record on environmental stewardship by selling 400 acres of local forest to Shell, against the wishes of the local community .

The appalling deal by Ray Burke ,whereby the Irish public have to pay top dollar for their own resource is another abuse of a national natural resource that needs immediate investigation. This is one of many cases documented by the Woodland League where the forest resource is treated as real estate and sold, leaving adjacent communitys to deal with a completely unexpected intrusion into their precious environment. The corporate ethos is to privatise the profits and externalise the costs i.e. pass the bill for environmental damage onto the local community. Their responsibility is to provide as much profit for their shareholders as possible, that's the bottom line .

Cad a dheanfaimid feasta gan adhmaid?

Line from old Irish poem Caoine Cill Cais, as the last of the ancient Irish woods were felled in the 1600s, the context by which the Gaelic society operated for thousands of years was removed, leaving a degraded landscape and a broken culture, witnessed by this distraught Poet. The much maligned native tree resource today can play its part in helping to create a new forest economy, which will benefit rural and urban community s alike .

There are a limited number of beds available in local Kilcommon Lodge Hostel at 12 euro per person, with dinner at 7 euro extra. Please contact Andrew at 087 9933157 for further information and to book a bed in the hostel. Or stay at Rossport Solidarity Camp, call Michael 086 3588890.