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IRELAND IS FALLING down on protection of our network of nature areas to protect a host of at-risk birds and other species, according to a new assessment from the European Commission.
The Commission report examined the effectiveness of measures to protect vulnerable species in designated nature zones known as Special Protection Areas (SPAs). Such sites cover over 9,000km – or 13% of Ireland’s land area – as part as part of the EU’s Natura 2000 network of legally protected areas.
From the 10 member states in the study, 10 SPAs were examined in each, covering a range of locations and species. In nearly all categories – setting and implementing conservation measures, site management and monitoring – Ireland performed far worse than the other nine countries examined.
Birds are good indicators of the general health of ecosystems, with many species in Ireland under threat and in need of protection, including the much-loved puffin and other iconic species such as curlew and corncrake, with breeding populations of both at risk of disappearing from our island.
EU member states are required to develop conservation objectives specific to each protected site to maximise the conservation of the species designated for protection. They must be site-specific, comprehensive, realistic, and, wherever possible, quantifiable and measurable.
Overall, 87 of the 100 EU sites assessed had site-specific conservation objectives (SSCOs) in place. Nine of the 13 sites without SSCOs were in Ireland and had “only simple generic objectives that state the objectives of the Directive and present a list of qualifying species”.
In no Irish case, the report said, were specific, targeted, measurable and time-bound conservation measures found to be in place to deliver the favourable status of species.
In addition, it found that “conservation measures do not address all significant pressures and threats affecting the bird species and their habitats on the site for any [Irish] SPA” examined in the study.
A Noteworthy investigation in August 2021 revealed that SSCOs had been set for just 33 of 154 sites in the SPA network at the time. In many cases, the conservation objectives were set well after the six-year deadline, taking between 10 and 20 years to set in 18 cases, and over 20 years in 11 cases.
A further 128 sites still only had generic conservation objectives in place at the time, over 110 of which were classified as SPAs over a decade ago, including 34 sites waiting over 25 years for site-specific measures to be put in place.
This included Puffin Island SPA and Skelligs SPA off the coast of Co Kerry classified in 1985 and 1986 respectively to protect the iconic, and now vulnerable, puffin, as well as other important species such as kittiwake, fulmer and manx shearwater.
Last August, the State issued a tender for a suitable candidate to help develop SSCOs for the remaining sites in Ireland’s SPA network. The contract was set to run from October to this February.
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing – under which the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) sits – noted the publication of the EU report and said that the Department is “considering its findings”.
Ireland now has detailed SSCOs in place for 51 SPAs, they said, with SSCOs for another four SPAs set to be published this week. They said that the process of progressing to SSCOs for the other SPAs is ongoing.
The report also raised concern with the lack of management plans for Irish sites, a knock-on impact from the absence of SSCOs that are meant to be translated into action through management plans.
Again, nine of the SPAs studied have no management plans, while the sole protected area with a plan has a “poor implementation assessment” and has “not been updated since 2010”.
In addition, the Commission found that there is no governance system in place at the 10 sites, with “incomplete and/or irregular” monitoring of many qualifying species in all the 10 SPAs.
These issues are having a real world impact, with only five of 37 species for which the sites are protected showing increasing numbers. In addition, populations of 20 out of 39 species that are showing signs of increasing numbers nationally are actually falling in the SPAs examined.
In its 2021 ENDANGERED SPECIES investigation, the Noteworthy team found that less than 60% of Ireland’s entire Natura 2000 network of over 600 sites had management plans in place.
The Department of Housing spokesperson said that “neither EU nor Irish law requires that management plans are put in place for Natura 2000 sites” and added:
“The Department is committed to the ongoing setting of conservation objectives and the implementation of necessary measures to protect a wide range of habitats and species, in SPAs in particular and across the Natura network.”
This is a follow-up to our ENDANGERED SPECIES investigation which found that the loss of Ireland’s biodiversity is accelerating at a worrying pace.
By Niall Sargent of Noteworthy
Noteworthy is the crowdfunded community-driven investigative platform from The Journal that supports independent and impactful public interest journalism.
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This is getting hilarious at this stage. At what stage are all these supposed “intellectuals”, “intelligent politicians” and lest we forget the blessed academic insulated economists, going to get it! It aint working lads, so I know uprooting the whole system puts all your publicly paid gravy trains at risk but sher that’s just tough! Wait for Italy to go caput next and then just wait for the meltdown. Any chance the journal would get all our learned economist friends like Mr Whelan on here? Didn’t he tell us we’d have €700 billion at our disposal if we voted Yes? There’s €100 billion gone already and markets are still tearing Spain apart. You just have to question credibility at this stage! Oh dear oh dear, everyone feathering their own nests while Europe burns!
thank god for all the intuitive geniuses who write on the journal
That 700 billion alone will only last for Spain. Italy and France are in the waiting room.
Hence my policy not to invest within the Euro zone.
In the longterm the Euro will falter as we know it.
That is of course just my opinion.
What is yours?
Joe, there’s no need for any intuition here. A cursory study of economic history clearly demonstrates that there is no easy or painless slution to this crisis.
Over eighty years ago, Ludwig von Mises forewarned the Wall St. crash with this now ominous quote. “There is no means to avoid the final collapse brought about by credit expansion..”
We have just lived through the largest expansion of credit in the past 40 years. Expect a collapse of similar scale.
Just looking at Richard Bruton here on tv3 news saying that the Spanish bailout has stabilized the situation are they for real this government, we need to get out on the streets enough is enough
Sure in fairness Richard is talking bull. Sure wasn’t it the fiscal compact that was going to provide stability?
So which countries have signed up for the fiscal compact? Greece? Yes. Spain? Yes. Ireland? Yes (or soon to do so as the referendum was passed). Portugal? Yes. Anyone notice a pattern her? Have any other countries ratified it?
It’s all about the positive signals, and the stability, we’ll be graaaaaand. There are positive signals everywhere now, nothing to worry about. It’s sorted.
Economic issues like this will lead to massive social upheaval, my money’s out of Irish banks! And have started to become fully self sufficient for food … City folks will look well when the powercuts come
In 1971, the gold standard system, established at Bretton Woods, was abandoned in favour of a fiat currency system with the US dollar positioned as the global reserve currency. This allowed the US to bridge funding gaps, caused by the cost of funding both the Vietnam war and the ongoing Cold war with Russia.
The world benefitted greatly from this momentous decision.
Firstly, the US, liberated from the monetary shackles of the gold standard, could finance enhanced military expansion/adventurism without subjecting American voters to onerous levels of taxation.
Secondly, fiat currency offered enhanced economic capabilities to central planners (governments, central banks). The volume of currency supplied into the economy could be increased to stimulate growth (monetary easing) during recessionary episodes. This was particularly opportune for nations like the US & Britain as their domestic manufacturing industries were in decline in the 1970′s. In both these nations, uncompetitive businesses were allowed to fail as any economic impacts were, or would be, mitigated by a, soon to be, thriving banking and financial services sector courtesy of the enhanced monetary capabilies now available to central planners.
An anomaly of fiat currency is it’s requirement for constant monetary expansion and it’s propensity to generate credit fuelled booms and debt. As fiat currency holds no intrinsic value, to ensure monetary stability all new currency is issued as debt. Central banks issue new currency to governments and Market participants as collaterallised debt. To allow for repayment of this new currency (debt) the volume of new currency must constantly increase (constant monetary expansion). Needless to say, the rate of monetary expansion has increased exponentially over subsequent decades.
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-8-fed-money-creation
While governments issue bonds to their central banks to access new currency, Market participants faced increasing difficulty sourcing, the expotentially increasing quantities of securities required to access new currency. The danger of a collateral drought were that the wheels would come off the accelerating fiat currency merry-go-round.
In the US, this problem was overcome by issuance of toxic securities. In many cases these were facilitated by the expanding subprime mortgage market.
European banks, as well as trading in toxic securities also, accessed collateral via the government bonds of nations, whose creditworthiness had recently been enhanced, such as Greece. Also, newly created collateral courtesy of credit-fuelled property booms in countries such as Spain and Ireland.
Ron Paul!
Bring back the gold standard
I don’t entirely agree Dmc. The twentieth century was dominated by two currency systems (or variants). Firstly, the gold standard up until 1971. This was abandoned because it did not provide enough liquidity for free-spending governments and properly functioning economies at the same time.
Then fiat currency which we will soon see disappear down a sinkhole of inflation and debasement.
The ideal solution is a currency system where the supply of currency matches the demand for currency. While there is not an oversupply as we currently have now with paper money.
Mexican Hugo Salinas Price has suggested a hybrid duel currency system. This involves the issuance of paper currency long side the issuance of silver coins.
US Professor Larry White goes a step further, suggesting complete liberalisation of the issuance of currency.
Either system could prove extremely useful for Ireland in the near future.
http://www.freebanking.org/2011/09/13/the-free-competition-in-currency-act-of-2011/
Why can’t the create a separate vehicle for bailing out banks on their own? Think we might have had a glimpse of what would happen this morning. Spanish bond yields fell until it became apparent that Spain, and not it’s banks, was on the hook afterall
The EU/ECB had a chance in 2009 to resolve this, by being radical then. They refused and dithered, looked at the German economy, saw it was doing fine and left it at that.
The problem festered and grew, growth collapsed under austerity and the debt remains. Now growth is stalling across all countries, including the so called core. Holland heading in to a recession and Germany will as well.
This is funnier than my Fr Ted boxset!!! All this crap is caused by fear and stupid clowns gambling with the stockmarkets. The funniest thing is governments know this but wont do anything about it!!!
Batten down the hatches! This is going to be a bumpy ride. The euro in its current form looks doomed. No more band aids left. The game is up. The euro political zombies have bottled it.
there is one simple, tried and tested solution and its called bankruptcy.
The conspiracy theorists think this banking crisis is to force the countries into a united states of Europe controlled by the big banks..what a ridiculous idea. Idiots!!
Although who s running Greece and Italy at t moment…hummm, nah it couldn’t be bankers??
Waterford do ur homework it’s actually not a theory anymore it’s fact . The bankers are actually sucking the world economies dry . It’s down to fiat currency and for fiat currency to survive it must always have ppl spending that’s why you have Christmas valentines day paddy s day Easter the currency must always be circulating . There’s no solution fiat currency does not work . Our civilisation is going to collapse the way it’s going so the ppl in charge may see this as a reason to create a super communist state where everything I’d controlled .
Can we have more bandaid please, the bit we thought fixed Spain has vanished, where will it all end
have your say