Marina Conway
Marina Conway, forester from Sligo and former CEO of Western Forestry Co-op.
Marina from Co.Sligo is a well-known voice and strong female leader in forestry in Ireland. During her tenure in Western Forestry Co-op, she established Ireland’s first Woodland Festival, the largest Native Woodland Park, and the first pioneer birch woodland.
She is a regular contributor to radio, print media, and television including most recently Faraway Fields on RTE where she lived with an Indigenous tribe in Brazil.
Marina graduated from UCD with a degree and Masters in Agricultural Science specialising in Forestry, as well as receiving qualifications in environmental auditing, training and water pollution control. Marina has worked in the public sector, private sector and ran her own company. She is the former CEO of Western Forestry Co-op and worked internationally in Government in New Zealand on Forestry in the Emissions Trading Scheme. Marina has spent the majority of her career in farm forestry, her passion is for farmers, farm families and communities being at the centre of our national forestry policy and that our forests are best served in local and rural ownership. She has spent her career providing motivation, information, organisation and management services to create widespread engagement in sustainable forest management to include afforestation, native woodland management, community woodlands and harvesting in all aspects of farm forestry. She has participated in national committees on forestry including been appointed by the Minister to Project Woodland, the Forestry Strategy Implementation Group and Ministerial Forestry Programme Implementation Group amongst others.
Marina’s chosen topic is “Unlocking the Potential of Agroforestry in an Irish context. Policy and Practice”. Marina believes that agroforestry has huge potential in Ireland, allowing farmers to integrate trees into their existing farming systems, however as a relatively new enterprise, with many unknowns, uptake has been low and so she aims to look to more established agroforestry systems internationally to garner experiences.
