Hundreds of millions of euro in funding and a fundamental change of mindset in the Government will be needed to save Ireland’s nature, an advisory body has warned.
The independent advisory committee formed to make recommendations on the State’s Nature Restoration Plan says a dedicated fund – receiving potentially up to €700 million a year – must be provided.
Part of the fund would pay farmers, other landowners and fishers to let certain natural habitats rejuvenate by avoiding intensive agriculture and extraction in some locations.
The money would also beef up the understrength National Parks and Wildlife Service, enable investment in the country’s neglected national parks and nature reserves, boost tree-planting and green space creation countrywide, and accelerate the rescue of the polluted river network.
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The committee says any nature restoration strategy will also need leadership from the Government, public bodies and semi-State companies.
“The Committee wishes to highlight the frustrations and inefficiencies existing across public bodies due to a lack of shared goals, poor communication pathways, incoherent policies, and an unwillingness to share data across Departments and State agencies,” it says in its final report.
It notes that the Department of Housing – responsible for the nature brief – was asked for input on urban ecosystems but failed to deliver.
It says the State must lead the way by restoring nature on public land, but Coillte and Bord na Móna, the largest public landowners, have commercial mandates that work against nature.
Neither company has board members with specialist ecological or environmental skills, the report says.
It also says the outdated Arterial Drainage Act, which requires the Office of Public Works to drain peatlands and wetlands to create farmland, is long overdue repeal.
The country has no flood plain map, no localised habitats maps, no pesticide reduction plan, not enough native tree saplings in nurseries to support new planting and a lack of data on many species, including forest birds and seabirds.
“Severe limitations” must be introduced on the sale of pesticides outside of professional use if the dramatic decline in bees, butterflies and other pollinators is to be halted, it says.
The advisory committee, chaired by Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, has members drawn from farming, fisheries, public officials, environmental groups and academics.
Their report was informed by a countrywide series of open community discussions and closed-door meetings with business, farming and other sectoral interest groups.
All EU member states are required to produce a Nature Restoration Plan by this September as part of a legal requirement to restore 20 per cent of Europe’s degraded land and sea habitats to health by 2030, and all of them by 2050.
The latest assessment of Ireland’s nature, published last December, showed 90 per cent of habitats, including woodland, coastal, freshwater and grassland areas, were in poor condition, with many of the animals and birds reliant on them also in decline.
In her forward to the report, Ní Shúilleabháin says the slide has been going on for decades, jeopardising not only wildlife but food production, clean water and buffers against extreme weather that a healthy natural environment supports.
“Funding this work makes economic sense, since it directly benefits societal health and well being, lessens security and financial risks, and contributes to climate mitigation and adaptation,” she says.
She says funding a turnaround makes economic sense.
“It directly benefits societal health and well being, lessens security and financial risks, and contributes to climate mitigation and adaptation,” she says.
The recommendations have been submitted to Minister of State for Nature Christopher O’Sullivan, who will formally publish them on Wednesday.
