Winners of ‘Trees in Our Lives’ photo competition receive prizes
National Ploughing Championships 2025
The overall winners of the 2025 Teagasc/Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Forest photo competition received their prizes from Minister of State with responsibility for forestry, Michael Healy-Rae, at the National Ploughing Championships in Tullamore yesterday.
This year’s competition, celebrating 'Trees in our Lives', featured three themes and incorporated both adult and junior age categories. Each theme winner was chosen by a panel of judges and the final selection of the overall winners in each age category was by popular choice.
The overall winner in the adult category is Richard Duff from Portlaoise, Co Laois. Richard has had a keen interest in wildlife for many years, and his striking image highlights the great biodiversity and habitat value of forests and trees.
His wonderfully vivid photo features a male Great Spotted Woodpecker in Tomnafinogue Wood in County Wicklow. The adult bird is perched on a tree trunk with a caterpillar in its beak, ready to nourish its chick who has emerged from its nesting cavity in eager anticipation.
Richard Duff has a passion for nature and biodiversity and has also set up wildlife hides on his farm in Ballyfin, Co Laois, facilitating the capture of a rich variety of wildlife images in natural rural settings.
Richard received a voucher for €600 as both category winner and overall winner in the adult section of the competition.
In the junior category the deserving winner is Kendrick Urquhart from Sligo. Kendrick’s winning image features a family of geese on the serene waters of Clare Lake in Claremorris.
The background of the setting sun and the autumn colours of the native trees reflecting on the water represented a highly attractive vista which Kendrick ably captured despite the hurry of the geese to get home.
Kendrick received a voucher for €300 as both category winner and overall winner in the competition’s junior section.
Congratulating the competition winners, Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine with special responsibility for Forestry, Farm Safety and Horticulture, Michael Healy-Rae said: “I am delighted to present these prizes to Richard and Kendrick as the overall and highly deserving winners. I would like to sincerely thank the hundreds of competition entrants for highlighting such excellent examples of the many roles forests play in all our lives.”
Minister Healy-Rae continued: “I would also like to thank my Department and Teagasc for their important work in promoting and celebrating the variety of themes in this year’s forest photo competition.
They clearly reflect the excellent supports available to farmers and landowners within our current Forestry Programme. We have worked hard to make sure that the opportunities are there for anyone with suitable land to plant trees and establish new forests.
Forests create employment, produce wood as a sustainable Irish product, support our climate goals, support biodiversity, and improve our health and wellbeing. Forests have a critical and lasting influence across generations, which is clearly reflected in this competition, with prizes awarded across both adult and junior categories.”
Tom Houlihan, Acting Head of the Teagasc Forestry Department said: “We sincerely thank all participants who submitted high quality photographs to our 2025 competition. I would like to thank the Minister and his Department for sponsoring the competition prizes and the judging panel who had such a challenging task in selecting the winners in each theme.
I would also like to acknowledge the Teagasc Public Relations Department for their invaluable help in promoting and coordinating this ever-popular competition. We look forward to organising another collaborative photo competition in 2026”.
The winning photos from the forest photo competition are available to view here.