Environmental campaign group Friends of the Forest and the Galway City Council have joined forces to implement a new initiative designed to secure public participation in regular major monthly clean-ups of the city’s public spaces.
According to Brendan Smith, Friends of the Forest spokesperson,there is a “serious litter problem in parks and other green spaces across the country”.
He says: “|Because of the local authority recruitment embargo, ordinary citizens must now take up the challenge of helping to keep our valuable green resources clean in order to protect our increasingly threatened wildlife and to encourage greater use of woods and parklands by schools, arts groups, and local communities.”
Inspired by the international ‘Beach Watch’ project, Friends of the Forest held a series of meetings with City Hall’s environmental education officer Sharon Carroll and the superintendent of parks Stephen Walsh on implementing regular high-profile mass clean ups that would each month focus in on different public spaces across the city.
The result is that the first of these major clean-ups known as ‘Glan’ operating under the auspices of Galway City Council will start at 2.30pm on Sunday November 15 in the Terryland Forest Park. Follow-on clean-ups will include Merlin Woods, Barna Woods, and seashores.
The group are calling on all city residents to take part in this partnership initiative to make a positive contribution to the city’s image and well-being.
The litter drive will represent an important step in re-engaging the people of Galway with City Hall’s environmental policies. It is hoped that the council will re-introduce an annual eco-programme for Terryland Forest Park and elsewhere that will include family tree planting days, community arts events, and educational nature tours. Continued tree planting is urgently needed to offset global warming with forests acting as carbon sinks. As well as being major biodiversity zones, forests also serve as important passive/active amenity areas.
