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ANOTHER LIFE:THE WESTERN HILLS had to wait for rain before blackened slopes, from Donegal to Connemara to Kerry, began to turn green again after an unprecedented, reckless scorching of the earth. Coillte alone counted 350 fires this spring, costing many millions in burned conifer plantations. The cost to nature was only to be guessed at in calcined hares, lizards and frogs, and charred or starved nestlings of hen harriers, stonechats, wrens, thrushes, pipits, larks.

The fires went on for many weeks past the legal cut-off date of March 1st. How many were purposeful, how many the madnesss of young vandals after the pub, we shall never know. Environmental groups have blamed a change in the single-payments scheme that ties payment to farmers to “utilisable areas” of land. Scrubby hectares dotted with gorse don’t qualify, and fire may have seemed the way to start reclaiming them.