Terryland Forest Park 1.95

The Terryland Forest Park is an urban forest park in Galway, Ireland. It was launched in January 2000 as the largest such project in Ireland with a plan to involve the citizens of Galway city in planting 500,000 native Irish trees in an area of 120acre not far from the city centre.BackgroundThough under the auspices of Galway City Council, it had a community presence in a multi-sectoral management steering committee which led to a high level of involvement by local people in the planning, design and programme events during the period 2000–2003. Thereafter, Galway City Council seem to have lost interest in promoting it as a local community partnership project and the under-resourced committee was seldom allowed to meet.In late 2007 city officials announced plans to build a new road through the park. This led to a public backlash with the "Friends of Galway Forests" NGO mounting a campaign which resulted in a 10,000-signature petition being handed into City Hall to stop a construction that protagonists said was contrary to the council's own environmental policies and would destroy the park's delineation as a candidate 'ecological corridor'. In response to the campaign, city officials promised to support a reconstituted management committee and commissioned in mid-2008 a consultant to draw up a membership listing and new terms of reference. The recommendations of the report, which appeared in early 2009 and proposed that a new parks group be recognised as a sub-committee of the Galway City Development Board were never acted upon. The committee has not yet been re-activated much to the annoyance of local community activists.Some successes were achieved by supporters of the park in 2009–10: A monthly community-local council parks clean-up, known as Glan Suas Gaillimh, commenced in November 2009. In December 2009, the Parks division of Galway City Council agreed to a request from local residents and environmental campaigners to designate almost 1acre of the Terryland Forest Park in the Ballinfoile Mór area as the site for a community organic garden (An Ghairdín). The latter was officially launched by the Mayor Councillor Michael Crowe in July 2010. In January 2010 an attempt by city officials to include the Forest Road in the draft Galway City Development Plan was overturned by Galway City Council when the councillors supported a motion from Labour Councillor Derek Nolan (now TD) for its exclusion. The first community planting of trees took place in March 2010.