After a spring and summer of talking to people, project planning, initial site visits and pouring over maps, a new project to develop the concept and approach to the creation of a landscape-scale wetland wilderness park in the mid-Shannon region of Ireland is up and running.
A long-term vision of the Golden Eagle Trust and many others has been to see the re-establishment of large scale wetland habitats in the Shannon basin. These would have the potential to restore wildlife, help with water and flooding issues and provide economic, recreation and well-being benefits to the community.
The catalyst for this project was the award of grant funding from the Heritage Council Heritage Grant Scheme. Other partners are coming on stream - more on that in future blogs updates...
Of course much of the relevant potential wetland habitat is currently managed by Bord na Mona for commercial interests and some is under private ownership. Bord na Mona have been helpful in encouraging dialogue and discussion throughout and supportive of the project receiving grant funding. It will be critical to the future development to work closely alongside Bord na Mona's own work plans but key in this initial project will be building their current thinking into the concept and planning from the start.
This blog post kicks off what should be a series of posts to keep stakeholders and the public updated on progress and actions during the next few months.
By the end there will be consultations, mapping and imaging, documenting of process and the forming of a collective vision and concept with clear aims and objectives, identified partners and the key actions identified to establish, create or restore Ireland's largest wetland area bringing in associated sustainable activities, visitor facilities and access routes to enable people to be a key part of its future and make it a significant contributor to community, tourism, economy and well being in the area.
The area in focus lies to the northern end of Lough Rea across both Longford and Roscommon Counties. An approximate search area is shown here. Longford and Roscommon County Councils are already involved in discussions.
More on all of this in upcoming blog posts and an opportunity to contribute views and thinking through consultation and events will be underway very soon
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