First things first, as Richard Nairn makes clear. Please, he requests politely but firmly, there will be no mention of precisely where this interview was conducted. Suffice it to say that we are talking somewhere near Ashford, give or take a few kilometres. Suffice it to mention that the trees he monitors and cares for here grow within an easy stone s throw of a minor tributary of the River Vartry. Suffice it to suggest if you want to know more about his work, then read his book rather than come calling in person.
Where one of Ireland s leading ecologists has his haunt is not a public place, he stresses. Yet he hopes that what is going on here, in his little (no more than three acres) slice of old-fashioned Irish woodland, may be of general interest.