Another Life: Michael VineyMost Irish people still have to be prompted into thinking of the natural environment as part of our heritage.
But once reminded, they're all for protecting rivers, canals and coastline, are concerned about predatory developers (though "infrastructure" has to come first) and are even prepared to pay an average €47 per person per year for better protection of heritage as a whole.
That much can be plucked from Valuing Heritage in Ireland, the latest and deepest exploration of public attitudes commissioned by the Heritage Council. And while its own superlative roster of work (initiated, I feel it needs saying, on the orders of the late Charles Haughey) seems still broadly unknown to the masses, the extra €90 million so willingly offered does suggest plenty of room for a rise in the council's own modest budget of €9.2 million a year.
Old buildings still come first to mind when "heritage" is mentioned (even, indeed, old people, so far as primary-school 10-year-olds are concerned). And even where focus group participants identified the natural environment as heritage, this mostly meant designated sites or well-known attractions such as the Ring of Kerry; the wider rural environment came nowhere. Thus, when people were asked how far they lived from a heritage site, they were far more likely to think of a protected monument than of landscape (so would I, for that matter: "site" remains such a fenced-in, soulless word).
When people do think about the value of natural environment, they still tend to put tourism first and follow on with their own personal benefits of recreation, stress-relief, and so on. Some 40 per cent rarely watch environment or wildlife programmes on television (which must take considerable ingenuity) and half the population admits to rarely reading about the subject (thank you, the remainder).
Nowhere in the 117-page report on face-to-face interviews, focus groups and so on, does the word "biodiversity" appear (I know, but we're stuck with it), nor any hint of awareness that nature and its non-human creatures might have value of their own. So while an overwhelming majority - 95 per cent - thinks it is either very or fairly important to protect our heritage (slightly up on 2005), there is a long way to go in staking out the natural environment's claim as the oldest and most endangered inheritance of all.
On the brighter side, we must count the growing minority of people who not only care about nature but enjoy improving their knowledge of it and exploring it in the field. Among the latest beneficiaries of the Heritage Council's publications grants scheme is a slim, attractive book that sets an exceptional standard for local natural history.
A Nature Guide to the Ardara-Portnoo Area of Co Donegal may not be the sexiest title on the shelves this year, but to anyone who knows of this remarkable corner of the Donegal coast, it offers a wholly enriching key to its geology, plants and wildlife. Few 10sq km parts of the country have as much wild nature to offer as this wonderfully untidy promontory, with its maze of dunes, lakes, reed swamps and grassy machair plains, all framed by outsize strands and estuaries and patrolled by joyous gangs of choughs.
Originally attracting pioneer botanists such as Robert Lloyd Praeger and Henry Chichester Hart, it is now a magnet for some of Ireland's finest naturalists and professional scientists. A full dozen have co-operated on this guide, recruited by ecologist Richard Nairn. As he says: "There are few more satisfying endeavours in natural history than to look in detail at the ecology of one small area, trying to relate its plants and animals to the habitats, geology and land use."
Nairn, who heads up the Wicklow-based team of environmental consultants Natura, is author of the excellent Ireland's Coastline, just republished in paperback (Collins Press, €20). His new guide, however, is the first title from The Nature Press, his own new publishing venture, intended to specialise in the natural history of Ireland. While several Irish publishers, led by Con Collins of Cork and TownHouse, have provided outstanding nature books for the general reader, there has never been a publisher with the island's flora, fauna and ecology as its sole concern.
The Nature Press will have an expert editorial panel to assure "peer group" standards for local area guides, field identification handbooks, major research reports and so on.
A Nature Guide to the Ardara-Portnoo Area of Co Donegal can be purchased at www.naturepress.ie, €12 plus 2 postage
EyeOnNature
I noticed a different spider among the normal residents of our back porch. It was a striking lemon yellow colour with a small red mark on its back, and was about 15-20mm in size.
... Liam Roche, Saggart, Co Dublin
It was a female hunting crab spider, Misumena vatia, which hunts on flowers and can be yellow, white or green, depending on the colour of the flower.
The "minke whales" seen in Dalkey Sound on July 3rd were almost certainly the bottlenose dolphins seen in the area on the same day. Minkes are usually solitary, and even when feeding are likely to be quite some distance apart.
Pádraig Whooley, Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, Clonakilty, Co Cork
A large number of sheep and lambs were put into a heavily grazed field next to our house in Connemara. We were surprised to see one ewe and her lamb eating all the nettle tops in the hedge nearest to us.
... ... Michael Redfern, Oranmore, Co Galway
Sheep will eat nettles if pushed, but Shetland sheep will eat them for preference.