Eco Hero (Individual) Of The Year supported by Craghoppers: Outsider Awards 2023

At a time when environmental action has never been so important we asked you, our readers to nominate some of the best Eco Individuals of 2023. You certainly did not disappoint! We were bowled over by both the quality and quantity of the stories you sent us. So sit down, make yourself comfortable and read the inspirational stories of these extraordinary groups of people who are making a huge difference to the Irish outdoors and are now officially on the long list of nominees for the #OutsiderAwards.

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If you’re a nominee, consider yourself cordially invited to our annual awards ceremony on the evening of Wednesday 21 February 2024 in the Sugar Club, Dublin. We are thrilled skinny to announce that our fab sponsors are on board to help us celebrate all that is great and good about the Irish adventure scene, so it’s guaranteed to be a good party.

Our hugely generous title sponsor for the Outsider Awards 2023 is Sport Ireland Outdoors, our other supporting sponsors are Craghoppers, Leave No Trace, Salewa, Vagabond Tours, Sustainable Travel Ireland and Nuasan.

For everyone else, a limited number of tickets are on sale through the link below. Subscribe to our email newsletter on our homepage to hear more about the Outsider Awards 2023.

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This award recognises that environmental efforts taken by individuals can be just as impactful as those taken by larger groups. Ireland’s outdoors offers beautiful landscapes and the efforts of these people help us all to enjoy them.

Stephen McEvoy, TrashFreemtb

Through TrashFreemtb, Stephen McEvoy (41) works tirelessly litter picking and galvanising the Irish mountain biking community to look after the natural environment which enables them to do sport they love.

Stephen – who is from County Laois – has been litter picking while out on his bike since 2019, and he decided to set up TrashFreemtb to encourage other mountain bikers to do the same.

“I want to educate people, young and old, about our behaviour while we’re in the outdoors, and how we can affect nature by not looking after it,” he says. “There is a lot of information regarding different waste and how that affects our seas and coastline but I wanted to show that it’s just as important to protect our wild upland areas. Simple things such as picking litter can make a big difference as litter can be a death trap for small mammals.”

Stephen organises litter picks with a social aspect. “This way it helps to keep it casual and encourages more people to get involved,” he says, and he also goes to races to help out with litter. “That’s where the main core of mountain bikers can be found and it’s a great way to connect with them.”

Why does he think it’s important that mountain bikers and others who like being outdoors protect their environment? “Because it’s the place where we find joy and peace in and building that understanding of why it is so important to protect biodiversity, nature and our wild areas will help spur protection for it.”

Lourda Scott, Clean Coasts North Wicklow Co-ordinator

Lourda Scott has been drawn to the sea her whole life. After taking part in a Big Beach Clean in 2021, she was shocked by the amount of litter collected. However, she also felt empowered by the practical effect the clean-up had. It inspired her to set up a Clean Coasts group locally and so Clean Coasts North Wicklow was born.

Along with beach cleans, she has hosted educational workshops with Clean Coasts and brought awareness to national clean up campaigns, organising special beach cleans for Flossie and the Beach Cleaners’ Big Weigh In, the Big Beach Clean, World Ocean Day and Biodiversity week. “One of the highlights of setting up this group was seeing how a small group can help inspire others to take action,” says Lourda.
The effect of setting up this one group has been profound. Local primary schools have now started to organise their own regular beach cleans and, with the help of Wicklow Council, Lourda has given one school their own dedicated beach clean kit. As a fundraiser for their club, a local kids’ football team even contacted her to help organise a beach clean.

However, it is being involved in local actions that she finds the most empowering, saying, “Often news of the effects of climate change and pollution of our seas can seem insurmountable, but the simple action of litter picking is an easy and practical way to take back your power. Plus every person that gets involved in a beach clean always comes back with a smile on their face!”

Martina Healy, #2MinuteBeachClean

Martina Healy’s #2MinuteBeachCleans – which she posts daily on her Instagram account leitrimlittlepicker – have raised huge awareness of marine litter and the plastic pollution problem this year, and reminded people you don’t need a lot of time to make a big difference to your local environment.

Martina – from Drumkeeran in Co Leitrim – responded to a call from the charity Clean Coasts to start doing #2MinuteBeachCleans. “People may think two minutes is a very short time to make a difference, but small actions add up to make a big difference,” she says. “Every piece of plastic removed from the marine environment is no longer a danger to our marine life and environment and if everybody in Ireland did one #2MinuteBeachClean per month in 2023, that would be over 100,000 tonnes of litter removed from our ocean.”

She mostly picks up plastic bottles, plastic food wrappers, plastic baling wrap (a big problem in the rural area where she lives) and vape bars, which she says are becoming the “new replacement for disposal coffee cups”. And she tries to recycle as much of that litter as possible.

“People are very supportive, and they are delighted that County Leitrim is being recognised for playing our part on a global scale,” she says. “When I chat to people they really want to know about the effects of litter, especially on their health, with more information about nanoplastics coming out all the time. Litter is not being collected just to keep my community looking good, it’s being collected to keep future generations healthy.”

Dr Stephen Newton, Roseate Tern Project

Dr Stephen Newton has spearheaded one of the greatest conservation success stories in Ireland in recent years, restoring the population of Roseate Terns, a previously threatened seabird.

Stephen has been working with Roseate Terns for 27 years. What’s special about them? “They are the most beautiful of Ireland’s breeding seabirds,” he says, “with a largely white bird, black cap, black bill, orange legs and a delicate apricot-pink suffusion on the breast.” Though he notes that beauty isn’t a criterion for assessing the conservation priority of a species, instead that is done according to scarcity, and whether a species is increasing or declining.

In 1993, the population of Roseate Terns stood at just 76 pairs, yet thanks to Stephen and his team the breeding population has increased enormously. “In 2022, we recorded 313 pairs, by far the largest proportion of the European population of this species,” he says.

The project runs across two colony sites, Rockabill, a tiny pair of rocky islands in the Irish Sea, 6km from the mainland at Skerries, north County Dublin, and Inish at Lady’s Island Lake, south-east County Wexford.

At Rockabill, Stephen needs to recruit three wardens who are capable of living on an uninhabited island for almost four months. He also encourages a small number of volunteers to come and help for a few days or a couple of weeks. “The best way into conservation is to roll your sleeves up and volunteer – it could, and often does, change your life and give you a life-long appreciation of nature, both species and ecosystems,” he says.

Zoe Purcell, Killyon Manor in Co Meath

Zoe Purcell (62) moved to Ireland 16 years ago having spent 20 years in Africa. Over there, she ran a safari company and built eco-camps in remote spots on Lake Tanganyika and the surrounding savannah, which was home to wildlife ranging from chimpanzees to elephants.

Life in Ireland has been very different where home is Killyon Manor in Co Meath, an estate house dripping in faded grandeur and which also has a 60-acre farm.

Zoe, who hails from the UK but is now an Irish citizen, may have left Africa behind when she moved to Meath, but she brought her conservation mindset with her as she figured out what to do with this huge house and its farmland. You could say that redefining what a ‘big house’ meant was at the core of her mission as she set about transforming the land into a wildlife sanctuary and the manor into a hub for eco-minded people.

Amongst the highlights of Zoe’s work are the planting of 15 acres of oak forest and 20 acres of wildflower meadow that are under restoration. A 1km section of river has been restored and protected against the ravages of a drainage scheme which laid waste to biodiversity on the River Deel. And Zoe has recently started collaborating with the National Parks and Wildlife Service on a pioneering farm scheme which aims to restore the land.

And so Killyon Manor has now been transformed into a relaxed, welcoming haven in a wild landscape. It also plays host every year to Another Love Story, a low-impact, high-octane event which takes place every August after the hay-making is complete.

Zoe has collaborated with many people and organisations on the front line of the environmental / re-wilding movement, including Lucy O’Hagan (Wildawake) and the Gaelic Woodland Project.

And she is a floral artist in her own right under the name Bower Bird, creating art installations from foraged plants found locally and in season.

In the words of those who know her, Zoe is also “an open-hearted, generous soul and a cracking, all-round good lady!”

Vincent Hyland

“My life’s work is for people to see what I am seeing; the beauty of nature and its relevance to a functioning, healthy locality. Without wildlife there is nothing, with nothing there is no life.”

Those are the words of Vincent Hyland (62), a dedicated servant to nature in Ireland for over four decades. Hailing from Palmerstown in Dublin, he spent his childhood summers in Derrynane, Kerry, exploring its wonderful natural surroundings. Having fallen for the place, he moved there fulltime at age 47 and has spent much of his time since recording and logging the species there on his own time and largely on his own budgets.

His efforts have ranged from nighttime filming of spawning seatrout in the dead of winter to producing the first live stream of jackdaw nesting behaviour. The latter won a Prix Europa Award for RTE. What has resulted is a rare and extensive record of an eco-system – and one which is sadly now in decline and under pressure – which many believe is an unsung national treasure.

Public achievements include founding the website and print magazine Wild Ireland, which won a best website of the year (1999) and best Consumer Specialist Magazine of the year (2002). His films include Ireland’s Sea Birds and Marine Life, Kenmare Bay Underwater, Puffins of Skellig Michael and Call of the Wild.

However, the astonishing book Wild Derrynane, published in 2023, must surely be his magnum opus. It took 15 years to complete and contains thousands of superb wildlife images, all taken by Vincent. The book will continue to inspire generations to come.

In short, as friend and fellow nature lover John Murphy of Salmon Watch Ireland says, “Vinnie nurtures a love of the natural world and inspires all he comes in contact with through his outdoor educational field trips, films, art and music.”

Hugh McLindon, Peatland Restoration at Wicklow Mountains National Park

Hugh McLindon (53) drove a peatland restoration project in Wicklow Mountains National Park this year, inspiring groups of volunteers to help protect this vital carbon sink.

Hugh – from Glenmalure in County Wicklow – is a conservation ranger with the National Parks & Wildlife Service. In 2023, he and his colleagues and his team of volunteers from organisations including ReWild Wicklow, An Taisce and Mountaineering Ireland worked on the Barnacullian, Carrigshouk and Granamore bogs, building approximately 400 timber dams; fencing three hectares to keep the grazing animals off the bare peat; manually re-profiling some small peat hags; and spreading one hundred bags of heather brash to protect the bare peat.

Hugh is hugely passionate about restoring Wicklow’s peatland, heading up to work on the sites even on his days off and it is a testament to his leadership of the project that many volunteers came out every week, regardless of the weather.

“These projects will in time produce a great many benefits including carbon sequestration, increases in downstream water quality, supporting native biodiversity, reduction in flooding, as well as real-time benefits like community engagement and education,” says Hugh, who encourages others to join in and help out in the future on Thursdays between April and September by getting in touch with the volunteer organisations mentioned above.

“The Wicklow Mountains National Park is a special place,” he says. “It contains a diverse range of upland habitats such as blanket bog, wet heath and dry heath, and species such as peregrine falcons, merlins, red grouse, otters, kingfishers, pine martens, red squirrels, and a variety of bat species.” And thanks to Hugh, great strides are being made for its protection.