🌿 Chainsaws in the Quiet: Ireland’s Hedgerow Crisis – Fionn’s Green Journey
Hey there, eco-champions! 🌱
This month, I’m writing to you from Zurich, but my thoughts have been firmly rooted back home in Ireland, among the hedgerows that shaped my childhood. These wild, tangled corridors have always felt like ancient friends. As kids, we explored them, listened to the birdsong they sheltered, and watched badgers emerge at dusk. But now, they’re vanishing… fast.
So this edition is personal. It’s about the slow-motion destruction of Ireland’s hedgerows, and how the system meant to protect them is enabling their erasure.
🌳 Ireland’s Hedgerows: Disappearing Under Loopholes
Hedgerows cover more of Ireland’s countryside than our remaining native woodlands. They’re crucial for:
Birds like the Barn Owl, Yellowhammer, and Tree Sparrow
Carbon sequestration (57% more soil carbon than new plantings!)
Flood mitigation and soil protection
Pollinator highways and biodiversity corridors
And yet, we’re destroying around 3,000 km of them every year.
Why? Because in Ireland, agriculture covers over 65% of our land, aaaand it’s practically exempt from hedgerow protection laws.
Farmers can remove up to 500 metres of hedgerow without needing permission or oversight. They simply tick a box saying they’ll plant the same length elsewhere. No one checks if they do. Even if they rip out more, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process is paper-thin. Most applications don’t even record what birds or species are present. It’s a sham. If they apply for a larger segment to be removed, applications are almost always granted and rarely audited.
🌱 Replanting ≠ Restoration
On paper, it sounds like a decent trade: remove a hedge, plant another. But ecologists and NGOs like BirdWatch Ireland are sounding the alarm: this doesn’t work.
Old hedges are ecosystems, layered, complex, full of life. New hedges are often monocultures with poor biodiversity. It takes decades, even centuries, for a hedge to become the rich habitat it replaces.
This isn’t conservation. It’s greenwashing destruction.
🧾 Public Money, Private Destruction
Irish farmers are receiving over €3.6 billion in CAP payments from 2023–2027, including for schemes like ACRES that incentivize replanting hedges.
So yes—hedges are being destroyed, then replanted badly, then funded with our taxpayer money.
All while biodiversity collapses and emissions rise.
What Needs to Change 🛑
No more 500m exemptions. Every removal should require full, accountable ecological assessment.
“Replanting” shouldn’t count unless it matches structure, species, and function.
Independent audits. Where are these new hedges? Are they even alive?
Fund real ecological advice for landowners—not just box-ticking incentives.
💪 What You Can Do
Support BirdWatch Ireland—they’re doing brilliant watchdog work.
Write to your local TD and the Department of Agriculture.
Speak up when you see hedgerows removed, especially during nesting season (March–August). Contact your local wildlife ranger.
What I’ve Been Up To in March 🗓️
🍷Wine Adventure in Portugal: As part of our charitybuzz listings we offer exclusive tirps for donors to our charity the Green Journey Coalition removing microplastics from water. This time vineyard in Portugal.
🏔️ Mountain Escapes: Loving getting back into hiking here in Switzerland this month had many lovely hikes like this ridge.
🧪 Lab work at ETH: Intensive lab work in the barnes group at ETH.
🏠 Apartment Hunting in Zurich, let me know if you have any leads. ❤️
Random Things I’m Loving 🌟
🚵🏽 My new Cube e-Bike is incredible and opened up Switzerland to me. Excited to explore.
🏋🏽 My trainer Paulina has shown me so many new cool exercises for my morning gym sessions. Check out Turkish get ups.
🫘 This Savoury Peanut Beans & Sesame Eggs is just divine. Check it out.
😎 Shoutout to my new Zurich friends Fee and Jann. Loving spending time with you both and can’t wait for all our adventures.
🏙️ Found a new fav square in Lisbon, love taking out natural wines in the park.
Microplastics Update 🌊
Fionn & Co, in partnership with the Green Journey Coalition, is actively seeking investment to scale our innovative solutions for microplastic pollution and environmental impact. Meanwhile, GJC is in promising talks with a leading university to launch a collaborative research project aimed at accelerating sustainable material development.
We can’t plant our way out of destruction. We need to stop it at the root.
Peace, love, and hedgerow justice,
Fionn 🌱
This edition of Fionn’s Green Journey is fully carbon offset, thanks to the amazing support from Atlas Project! Each tree emoji below represents a verified tree planted to offset our digital footprint.👣
🌟 This Month: A new Black Ironwood has taken root in Mount Elgon, Uganda! 🌳
Fionn’s Green Journey Forest
🌲 🌳 🌴 🌿 🥑🌴🌿🌳
🌲 = White Fir, 🌳 = Black Ironwood, 🌴 = Indian Cedar, 🌿 = Red Mangrove, 🌺 = Pomegranate, 🍋 = Lemon tree, 🥑 = Avocado tree, 🥭 = Mango tree
Watch the forest grow with every edition. Feel free to request exact coordinates 🥾✨