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LAST UPDATE | 20 Dec 2022
AT COOLDROSS IN County Wicklow, there’s a wire fence. It’s three metres high and buried into the ground with an electric wire running across the top.
Behind the fence is a population of Lapwing, or Pilibín as Gaeilge: ground-nesting birds with a white breast, iridescent black wings and an elaborate feather quiff on the top of their heads.
They make a haunting ‘Pee-wit! Pee-wit!’ call that carries across the soggy meadows and wetlands where they breed. This once-abundant species is now endangered, on Ireland’s Red List since 1999, for a range of reasons including too few nesting and feeding places and too many predators (the latter explaining the need for the fence).
I visited this project, which is operated by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, earlier this year. After three years, it is showing signs of success with more than 20 breeding pairs in 2022, up from a mere handful in 2020. Strength in numbers allows the Lapwing to work together to fight off the hooded crows that feast on their eggs.
Beside the Cooldross project is Kilcoole Beach, where Little Terns nest. Here on the rocky shore, dedicated Birdwatch volunteers stand guard over a hundred or so nests, all numbered, with eggs camouflaged in the coloured stones. Again, thankfully, 2022 was a good season.
Over the past two years as Minister of State for Heritage, I have visited projects conserving our island’s last remaining Corncrake, Curlew, Natterjack Toads and Grey Partridge, all heroically led by passionate and dedicated NPWS teams, volunteers and farmers. It’s invigorating to see.
We do it because it’s necessary to preserve our hope that, one day, when nature is restored, a balance will be returned. Hope that society’s vision for the future of this island takes account of what is currently a broken, nature-poor, fragmented landscape. Hope that it chooses to make space for a mosaic of connected habitats buzzing and singing with thriving nature, resilient in the context of our many land and sea uses and a changing climate.
We must do better
The coming 12 months will be decisive for nature policy in Ireland. Our next National Biodiversity Action Plan (NBAP) will be finalised, informed and bolstered by the outputs of the Citizens’ Assembly and the parallel Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss.
It will also need to integrate the objectives of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030, including the proposed EU Nature Restoration Law. We expect the details of this new regulation and its implications for Ireland to become clearer over the coming months, though we already understand the imperative to develop a long term strategic fund for nature beyond current EU funding mechanisms and the need for policy coherence across a range of sectors in order to deliver on it.
The goals commit us all to protecting 30% of the world’s lands, waterways, coasts and oceans; restoring 30% of the world’s degraded terrestrial and marine ecosystems; investing $30bn annually in financial aid to help low-income countries meet the targets and reducing the subsidies that damage nature by $500bn per year.
One of Canada’s most famous sons, Neil Young sang ‘we got mother nature on the run in the 1970s’ in his 1972 classic, After the Gold Rush. Like many conservationists, Neil saw the destruction of our natural world back then as a threat to our very existence.
He was right. Today, we have a global pact for nature and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to shape what it means for Ireland in what history will see as the most crucial decade for action.
We must not limit our ambition. I want to be able to remove the fences in Cooldross, and everywhere else in this country, in my lifetime. This can only be achieved through collaborative action and inclusion of everyone and to do that we must break down our own barriers.
Malcolm Noonan is a Green Party TD for Carlow-Kilkenny.
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The Greens will be struggling to survive after the madness they have put us through since they got into power.
@Red Line: Can’t you not focus on the subject being discussed instead of taking potshots?
Take your frustration out in the polling booths instead of ruining the comments thread. The destruction of nature threatens our very existence.
@Ollie O’Cleirigh: The Greens are fake environmentalists. For example they approve of mass immigration, no matter of the impact on Ireland’s carbon footprint.
@Ollie O’Cleirigh: public discourse is far more important than voting even though both are important. The greens have set back the green agenda in Ireland for decades with lazy and incompetent political leaders and party members. They constantly commentate on our emissions and come up with no strategy as to how to mitigate them. Not one word from them on nuclear power and investment in our grid which cannot even connect new wind farms as its totally ineffective and at its capacity already. Then when asked about public they talk about hydrogen trains when electric trains would transform the islands public transport. Bicycle lanes painted on the side of roads and south facing window boxes. They are done. Get them out. Impoverishing the poor further particularly rurally will not help.
@Allora: 100%. There a bunch of amateur politicians that got lucky in the last election.
Malcom why is your so called Green party destroying wildlife habitats ,biodiversity killing trees wasting millions of taxpayers money at Lough Funshinagh flood crisis causing the demolition and flooding of homes farmyards and villages in a National housing crisis !! By not allowing the lake return to its natural level!!! Is there a hidden agenda ?
Well said Malcolm. Green policies are becoming accepted in most governments and we need a brave voice.
Just how committed is the government to preserving what’s left of our biodiversity? It allows coursing clubs to capture thousands of our native hares, supposedly a protected species, for the purpose of setting dogs on them. If that can happen to an iconic species that conservationists have dubbed the “Flagship of Irish biodiversity”, then how serious can our leaders be about saving our wildlife heritage? The image of a hare having its bones crushed or being tossed into the air by a coursing dog could aptly represent the attitude of this government to the wild creatures that share the island with us.
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