Limerick:'Worse now than before'Limerick’s regeneration project is in jeopardy due to a scarcity of public funding and locals in the city’s most disadvantaged estates are becoming disillusioned, writes JAMIE SMYTH Social Affairs Correspondent
'We wouldn't be able to feed ourselves if there was no more honeybee pollination'TALK TIME: CARTER GUNN AND ROSS McDONNELL directors of ‘Colony’, an Irish documentary about honeybees, writes EOIN BUTLER
Features »
The new breadbasket of the world?As swathes of their country’s land is leased, cleared and prepared for food production by foreign companies, Ethiopians are divided over whether this constitutes ‘agro-colonialism’ or much-needed development, writes MARY FITZGERALD Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Humpback fountainWHY DO THEY do it? Why does an animal weighing perhaps 35 tonnes spend such energy propelling itself clear of the sea, twisting long, knobbly pectoral fins in the air to land on its back in a great gout of spray? It’s the most forceful, spectacular action known among mammals, shared even with blue whales, the biggest mammals in the world, writes MICHAEL VINEY
Another Life »
- Prawn sandwiched between nets and nurture
ANOTHER LIFE: LIVING WITH such a far horizon and so much that is still unknown about the sea, I seize eagerly upon any new maps of Ireland’s ocean. We have had those magic, sonic readings of the seabed, right out to the shelf edge, the great Rockall Trough and Porcupine Seabight, and the abyssal plain beyond. Now, with the contours of that vast and Tolkienesque landscape revealed, we have pictures of the human hunt for seafood spread out across it – pictures painted, appropriately, in swarming, tiny dots.
- Wild boars raise question of nationality
ANOTHER LIFE: AMONG THE wildlife desperately foraging for food in Ireland’s icy New Year landscape were unknown numbers of Sus scrofa, the wild boar of Europe. Recent sightings and shootings have confirmed a quite widespread presence of the animal in Leinster and elsewhere, including whole families with piglets (or shoats). They began as escapes from farms, or perhaps were let out by animal-rights saboteurs as has happened notoriously in Britain, where some feral colonies are now well established in remoter woodland.
News »
- Horizons
Frog watch: The Irish Peatland Conservation Council is asking us all to join its annual survey of the common frog. February and March are peak times for frog spawn but you can also send them any sightings of tadpoles, froglets and adult frogs.
HorizonsA Heritage & Habitat roundup
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