Fintan O’Toole: Do we love Ireland enough to look after it?

Generations of Irish people used to sing Thomas Moore's The Vale of Avoca, rhapsodising nature's bounty in shedding "o'er the scene/ Her purest of crystal and brightest of green". Today the crystal is not so pure. The ecological status of the Avoca river is ranked by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as "bad".

It is one of the most chemically polluted bodies of water on the island. But its fate is not unique. In the late 1980s, Ireland had 573 pristine rivers. Today it has a mere 20.

Over the past 30 years we’ve allowed what was one of western Europe’s most unspoiled natural environments to deteriorate with alarming rapidity and through shoddy carelessness. But maybe we are beginning to appreciate what we have and what we are losing.

Contempt for the natural world was woven into the hubris of the Celtic Tiger years, summed up by Bertie Ahern's complaint about his pet projects being held up by 'snails, swans and people hanging out of trees'

The pandemic has reminded us in a most brutal way that we are part of nature. What begins in the caves of bats ends up in the lungs of humans. To the virus we are all just hosts.

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But alongside that grim rebuke to our hubris, there has also been a much more positive shift. In lockdown and confinement, more and more of us have found pleasure, solace and meaning in the natural world.

A survey by the EPA last year found an increase of 30-45 per cent in the amount of time we are spending in green spaces and waterside areas for physical and mental health, with nearly half of respondents reporting their discovery or rediscovery of such spaces.

In the quiet of lockdown, we listened to the birds. Confined to smaller areas, we looked with greater intensity at the life they contain. With foreign travel cut off, we explored our own island. Sales of bikes, walking boots and camping equipment have soared.

About time, too. We are waking up very late in the day to the realisation that the physical beauty and natural richness of the island are precious assets that are being squandered.

Ireland has had environmental disasters before. As in other parts of the world, the process of colonisation was also one of ecocide.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the old forests were cut down and the timber mostly exported to England. Bogs were drained to create more farmland. Species such as wolves, great auks, wildcats, cranes and bitterns were lost to the island.

Nature triumphs

On the other hand, the relative weakness of the industrial revolution outside the northeast saved Ireland from much of the environmental degradation typical of more developed countries. About the only good thing to be said for the terrible depopulation of the island between the 1840s and the 1960s is that it allowed nature to reclaim much of the countryside.

But over the past 30 years we’ve tolerated a slow, steady process of despoliation. We subjected a relatively clean environment to an almost inexorable process of degradation, with predictable consequences for biodiversity.

Contempt for the natural world was woven into the hubris of the Celtic Tiger years, summed up by Bertie Ahern’s complaint about his pet projects being held up by “snails, swans and people hanging out of trees”. It was part of the spendthrift atmosphere of the time – as well as wasting money, we laid waste to nature.

One of the few benefits of the pandemic is that we have collectively had a good look around. There's a lot to look at

The results are stark. From 1990 to 2018 we lost 258,800 hectares of our wetlands, an area greater than the size of Co Roscommon. Only 15 per cent of Irish habitats supposedly protected under EU law have a “favourable” status. Most have an “unfavourable” status and almost half show a continuing decline in their quality. These include marine, peatland, grassland and woodland areas.

A fifth of Ireland’s breeding bird species are in long-term decline. Waders such as the curlew, lapwing, redshank and dunlin have suffered a 93 per cent decline in breeding populations. Some farmland songbirds are disappearing: we have fewer than 100 breeding pairs of the whinchat and twite left in Ireland. The short-term population trend for the bird species that visit in the winter is terrible: more than half of them are in decline.

These problems are symptoms of environmental vandalism. It is most evident in relation to one of Ireland’s most abundant resources: water. Nearly half of the surface waters in Ireland are failing to meet the legally binding water quality objectives set by the EU water framework directive.

No excuse

There is no excuse for this. Ireland does not have the legacy of long-term industrial pollution that blighted so much of the European landscape. Our wet climate also means that we do not have the problem of the over-extraction of drinking water from rivers and lakes that affects hotter countries.

But we’ve thrown away these advantages. Nitrogen and phosphate pollution from farming has been allowed to run wildly out of control. Prior to 2015, the EPA reckoned that just 1.4 per cent of Irish rivers were showing increasing levels of nitrates. Its most recent report shows that this is now true of 47 per cent of them.

Hedgerows – a boon from the rush to enclose land in the 18th century – are vital to biodiversity in Ireland. But even local authorities continue to cut them between March and September when they are supposed to be protected. Is it any wonder that so many private landowners do the same?

This fecklessness might most charitably be interpreted as a postcolonial hangover. It is as if the land and everything in it still belongs to somebody else. Well over a century after the landlord class was banished, we act as though we were still afraid that if we take care of the place, someone will come along and raise the rent.

One of the few benefits of the pandemic is that we have collectively had a good look around. There’s a lot to look at: Ireland is still wonderful. In spite of all the harm we’re doing to it, the island is still in better shape than most western European countries. It is not too late to undo the damage.

Given a chance, nature is resilient. Even with limited protection, species such as otters and pine martens are showing signs of recovery. Where bogs have been restored, life has come back. There are signs that cranes and bitterns may be returning.

Discovering and rediscovering Ireland, as so many of us have been doing, is both a joyful and a sobering experience. There is at once the pleasure of its beauty and the painful awareness of its fragility. We are forced to ask whether we love the place enough to care for it.

This can be one decent outcome of the pandemic. The great outdoors that we have reoccupied is not as great as it should be. But we do not have to settle for knowing what we’ve got only when it’s gone.