AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
Meadows and hedgerows were a thing of wonder when I was growing up. They were starred with wild flowers with evocative names: Ragged Robin, Lady’s Bedstraw, Scarlet Pimpernel, Bird’s Foot Trefoil and Cowslips. When I walked on the short turf by the sea in Co. Down I trod on the miniature faces of Heart’s Ease and wild Thyme. Not anymore, for those flowers are gone, supplanted by pasture grass fuelled by fertiliser.
The sounds that lifted my heart then are nearly gone too, cuckoos and swallows arriving in spring, corncrakes, soaring skylarks and curlews trilling the shoreline. Habitat loss and intensive agriculture methods are blamed for their disappearance but, as the days lengthen and the spring bulbs begin to show, I wonder if we will ever get these flora and fauna back?
The answer is that we can, at least to some extent, if we are prepared to make the effort: that is the hopeful message in Richard Nairn’s book Future Wild about nature restoration in Ireland. We have heard a lot about rewilding, like leaving areas of lawn unmown. While rewilding leaves nature to its own devices, restoration is more proactive in that it “requires continual management from people to ensure that nature can survive and prosper” as Nairn puts it. “Nature restoration in certain types of habitats requires intervention to restart the natural processes that have been interrupted.”
The difficulty with biodiversity loss is that it happens slowly so that it the incremental effect can go unnoticed. At national level we have the 4th National Diversity Action Plan and the overarching EU Nature Restoration Law 1924, where overseeing biodiversity is the responsibility of National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and the Department of Local Government and Heritage but how do things actually work out locally in practice?
Nairn’s book has plenty of encouraging examples. The Bride Project in the Bride River Valley in Cork and Waterford is a good example of the way nature restoration and farming can co-exist, without impacting productivity, (Bride also stands for Biodiversity Regeneration in a Dairying Environment.)
It was designed by farmers for farmers and farmers get extra payments for increased biodiversity gains with innovative measures like skylark plots, new wildflower mixes for pollinators, hedgerow management, ponds and nest box schemes.
Another is the Burrenbeo Trust, an offshoot of the Burren Programme, which has set up a network of farmers, tourism interests and naturalists involved in appreciation of the Burren and encouraging good nature restoration management on farms through the Farming for Nature network.
Can bird species make a comeback? They can if a restoration project in Co. Wicklow for breeding waders is anything to judge by. The NPWS bought a stretch of coastal grassland and a lagoon near Kilcoole, water levels were managed, wet pools and muddy edges created and an electric fence to deter predators like mink and foxes introduced. From just five nests in 2017 the number was up to 76 for 10 different bird species, including lapwing, redshank and plover, by 2023.
Our freshwater systems are in crisis. “The number of rivers that can be described to a handful,” writes Nairn. But the main pollutants, run off fertiliser and slurry can be dealt with by creating settlement ponds with wetland plants to absorb the nutrient or plantations of trees on river banks to form a buffer.
Restorative measures can really make a difference to our rivers where fragmentation with artificial barriers interrupting their flow and the movement of fish and animals is a problem. Some of these, like old mill races are obsolete and their removal or the introduction of fish ladders beside weirs would help fish, salmon, trout and lamprey reach their spawning grounds.
Nature can be resilient, there are now revenant buzzards gliding the thermals close to my home in Co. Wicklow and adventurous Greater Spotted Woodpeckers which arrived from Wales and are now established on the West Coast. Red squirrels are making a comeback, thanks to the return of the Pine Martin, which preys on the less nimble grey squirrels which were responsible for the decline of the reds.
Nature is generous too, my favourite gift this year was the Christmas Eve sight of two otters playing together as they shared a fishy feast on an old pier in Connemara.
Future Wild by Richard Nairn is published by New Island Books
