Conservation ecologist Darren Reidy has been researching, gathering and “banking” native seeds across Ireland since his appointment in 2022. Banking the seeds of a native Irish plant is complicated – ideally you would need 10,000 seeds per species. But when the pandemic came, plans were stalled until 2022, when Dr Reidy was appointed by the Office of Public Works. To illustrate this, he took out a matchbox that he said holds a single seed of all 900 species native to Ireland. But Dr Reidy said that seed banking alone will not prevent plants going extinct, and said that attempts to reintroduce plants can fail.

Source: Irish Independent December 22, 2025 13:02 UTC