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A 61-year-old ‘environmental protector’ was given one year suspended jail and today had her chainsaw confiscated for stealing wood from a Coillte forest near her home in West Cork.
Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin asked if Sionad Jones had been behaving since she was convicted in February.
Defense attorney Peter O’Flynn said she had done so and was now contacting local Coillte management, who had agreed to plant broadleaf trees in the area. The judge said that Coillte was not the defendant in the case and that Sionad Jones was.
Noting that he had behaved well since the conviction, the judge imposed the suspended sentence on him and confiscated the chainsaw.
Judge Ó Donnabháin previously commented: “We heard about mother earth. We hear about bees and rabbits.
The jury found Sionad Jones, 61, of Maughnaclea, Kealkil, Bantry, County Cork, guilty of the lumber theft charge.
The judge then deferred the sentence until today to see what his commitment would look like to stop stealing wood from Coillte in the meantime.
“She put her beliefs to the jury and they were rejected. If you do not deliver it (stealing wood) you will end up in jail. I am not a platform for idle political engagement, ”he said.
When asked if she understood the commitment in February, Ms. Jones said, “I’m not going to do that again without Coillte’s permission. I get it. I take it seriously. ”
The judge noted de Garda Fintan Coffey that he had prior cannabis-related convictions, including a two-year suspended sentence in 2012 for growing it, on the same site where he cut down Coillte trees, and keeping it for sale or supply.
Defense attorney Peter O’Flynn said: “Sionad Jones has been described as eccentric, colorful and passionate, but I really don’t think dishonesty is a word that can be applied to Sionad Jones. She believed that she was leaving the forest in better condition, replacing the trees with better trees.
“Coillte was aware of her activities. They had seen her doing what she was doing before and Coillte never tried to stop that. She wasn’t doing it sneakily. She was doing it openly.
“She admitted to the guards that she was doing it for 30 years. She believed the law allowed her to do it.”
Judge Ó Donnabháin told the jury before they deliberated: “She calls for an old food search law. As a matter of law, there is no old law that allows you to do what you did. A person who lives in the valley does not have the right to take the wood without the permission of the owner ”.
The 61-year-old from Wales had been living in West Cork for 32 years. He said that when he came to Maughnaclea it was a beautiful valley where he searched with his son for nuts, berries, firewood, grass, mushrooms, etc. He described a landscape with a rich biodiversity that included orchids, blueberries, insects, birds, lizards, and frogs.
He was distraught when Coillte planted what he described as a hundred acres of an American tree, Sitka Spruce, which he said grew to create a dark forest floor that wiped out the biodiversity environment.
“I was surprised, outraged, horrified. I started cutting down some fir trees to let in the blueberries. First I was cutting to keep biodiversity alive. As the clearing got bigger, we needed broadleaf trees. I was inspired to plant trees. The valley I live in was destitute, ”Sionad Jones testified.
“I am not a criminal. I am acting to protect the ecology and to give Ireland’s broadleaf trees a place to live,” he said.
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