Damien Enright: Reforestation would give new hope for continuance of our species

By conserving a third of the land, the forests and the seas we would save the planet for our children.

Activists welcomed world leaders to COP26 with a field of climate fire in George Square in Glasgow, Scotland. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

In all fairness, I must admit that, in my many years of writing a weekly column for this paper, environmental news has never been so urgent that I needed a hotline to the editorial desk.

Still, I remember being a tad miffed when I missed the chance of a ‘scoop’ after being the first environmental correspondent to hear that a Fin whale was to be seen lying stranded on the floor of ebbed Courtmacsherry Bay one dawn morning in 2014. Or to tell the world that a Bearded Seal from the Arctic Ocean was relaxing on a sandbank in the same bay when, in 2017, an observant farmer phoned to tell me the news as I was getting out of bed.