Lord of Nature: Born To Rewild

06/05/2026

Save Dunsany forest!! Re-route the Navan rail design!

05/27/2026

Thank you Ruth for your support to stop the Navan Rail from destroying Dunsany and your relentless fight to preserve nature in Ireland. Call to action: Please email [email protected] to let them know you don’t want the rail project destroying this vital habitat and to please route it somewhere else. Thank you!

05/26/2026

In that time, there has been a 35% increase in bird population, the doubling of the insect population, the return of the Great Spotted Woodpecker and the return and breeding of the Red Kite.

05/26/2026

Urgent! Please send an email contesting the Navan Rail project going through the Dunsany Nature Reserve! Thank you. [email protected]

05/26/2026

Urgent!: Please send an email to contest the Rail line going through the Dunsany Nature Reserve. Thank you! 🙏 [email protected]

05/26/2026

Help Us Save Biodiversity. There is a consultation ongoing, if you care about nature and protecting it then please consider writing an observation to the Navan Rail project ( info document in the bio) and help us protect one of the few areas left that has ancient trees and many of our red listed animals.

05/13/2026

Soft cover version now available! 🙌

05/10/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1B55tRjV7Z/?mibextid=wwXIfr

At Bantry House, one of Ireland’s grandest historic homes, Brigitte Shelswell-White has been watching nature’s return with a sense of realism and guarded welcome.

The house's gardens are part of a quiet revolution taking place across the land, with landowners from Ballydehob to the Burren leading a charge for change. Link in comments

02/17/2026

People called him a fool. A disgrace to his heritage. Even a “waster.” But Randal Plunkett, death metal fan, vegan, and the 21st Baron of Dunsany, didn’t care.

In 2014, the Irish nobleman made a radical decision: to let 300 hectares of his 650-hectare estate return to nature. No more livestock. No mowing, planting, or weeding. Just wild, unmanaged land.

And while critics scoffed, nature roared back to life.

Where there were once only three types of grass, there are now 23. Birds carried seeds, trees regenerated on their own, oak, ash, beech, and black poplar. Insects swarmed in, followed by barn owls, sparrowhawks, and even rare corncrakes.

“I didn’t plant them,” says Plunkett. “The birds did.”

He’s seen stoats, heard reports of red squirrels, and drawn botanists from Trinity College to study the revival. Dunsany is now Ireland’s first private rewilding site to join the European Rewilding Network.

But it hasn’t been easy. Poachers. Hunters. Online threats. People were outraged that a castle-owning baron would “let it all go to weeds.”

“We’re great at preserving culture in Ireland,” Plunkett says. “But terrible at protecting nature.”

Once a bodybuilding, steak-eating aristocrat, he’s now a fierce defender of the wild, running off hunters, braving backlash, and standing firm.

And he’s not doing it for money. The estate survives through tillage farming and film production. The wild makes no profit. It simply lives.

As the climate crisis accelerates and species vanish, Plunkett’s stand is more than rebellion. It’s a reminder: sometimes the bravest thing you can do is nothing at all.

Let the land breathe. Let it remember what it once was. And maybe, let it teach us who we could be again.