25 April 2025

Community woodlands in Ireland – an alternative forest ownership model

Community woodlands in Ireland - an alternative forest ownership model

Paul Butler, Teagasc Forestry Liaison Officer, delves into the benefits of and potential for community woodlands in Ireland.

Under the Irish RDS Forestry Awards, a community woodland is defined as “involving the communal ownership and/or management of forests and woodlands which have been established and managed in a sustainable way that is beneficial to the local economy and/or environment”.

A community woodland is defined by the Woodland Trust in the UK as a woodland “partly or completely controlled by the local community, through a community woodland group. The woodland may be owned or leased by the group, or managed in partnership with a public or private sector landowner”.

So there are two main aspects to community woodlands that distinguish them from privately owned forests – They are at least partially owned by the local community and that community derives economic, recreational or environmental benefits from the woodland.

In Scotland there are some 40,000 hectares of community woodland. It is interesting that a lot of these are pre-existing woodlands that have been taken over by community groups and are managed by these groups. The management tends to focus less on the commercial aspect of timber production, although this is included, and more on the other benefits of forests. These benefits include carbon sequestration, biodiversity enhancement and recreation provision. There is even one woodland that has a small green burial ground among the trees.

Other projects include a small scale sawmill providing timber to community members, a forest school project including a purpose built classroom and, of course, forest trails and signage for recreational users of the forest.

In Ireland we have very good examples of community woodlands but there is certainly scope for further development of these excellent resources. They tend to be publically owned land that has been planted as a resource for the general local community. For example, the winner of the RDS Community Woodland Award for 2025 is Crough Wood in County Waterford. This beautiful resource has been developed by the Comeragh Community Development Group, a volunteer-run organisation based in Kilmacthomas. The previous year’s winner in this RDS Awards category was Mallow Castle and Town Park. This project originated with the Mallow Development Partnership and Cork County Council and is a community woodland in the sense that it is publically owned and provides recreational, educational and many other co-benefits to the wider community.

Initiatives in Mayo

A small community woodland in Mayo offers yet another option. Here, a greenfield site of 17 acres was identified and money was raised in the local community in order to purchase the land. All the people that gave money to the project became subscribers to a specially set up company, and this company now owns the land.

The Department of Agriculture Food and the Marine’s (DAFM) Afforestation Scheme provided the funding to plant the land. The trees are mostly birch with oak, Scots pine, hazel and alder also included. The woodland is 100% owned and managed by the subscribers to the company. The woods are conservation-focussed and managed on a CCF (continuous cover forestry) basis.

The trees are now 5 years old. There were 33 subscribers to this project which is called the Callacoon Woodland Project CLG. Pathways have been created for easy access and also a conservation log bee hive has been installed. This provides a home for our unique Irish Black Bee, Apis Mellifera mellifera.

The RTE programme Nationwide has been out to film the site and DAFM have also supported a film crew to record the progress of this unique way of creating a woodland. There have also been various successful open days on site.

Once the land was purchased, the grants covered the setting up of the woodland. In addition an annual premium is paid to the project each year as part of the Afforestation Scheme. This money is used to fund ongoing improvement of the woodland. This initiative allows people to become a part owner of a woodland without having to raise the money to buy all the land themselves.

Paul Butler describes how a community came together in Mayo to form a company and purchase land to plant forestry. It’s called the Callacoon Forestry Project.