THINK TWICE before you swat that springtime bee buzzing around your head: bees and other insects provide us with free pollination services each year worth an estimated €85 million.
These insects make up only a small fraction of Ireland’s overall species count, according to an inventory of our biodiversity published yesterday by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.
Pollination represents just one of the many essential services and benefits we receive free of charge from the natural environment, according to the director of the centre, Dr Liam Lysaght.
Together these services contribute a staggering €2.6 billion each year to the Irish economy, he said.
The new Minister for Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht Affairs Jimmy Deenihan was on hand to launch the report at the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin.
He said a new national biodiversity plan would be put before him within a matter of weeks.
He also said the island’s biodiversity represented “cultural capital” that could help support tourism and contribute to the economy.
“It is a different kind of tourism. More people would come to Ireland if our biodiversity was promoted more,” he said.
The Moriarty report and the banking crisis were “sending out the wrong signals internationally”, he said. Ireland’s biodiversity provided a more positive view. “We have something very special.”
The report, State of Knowledge, Ireland's Biodiversity 2010represents the first substantial catalogue of the insects, plants, birds, sea life, fungi, mammals and invertebrates that share the island with us.
“It is the first time ever that we have a strategic overview of the state of knowledge of Irish biodiversity,” Dr Lysaght said.
This information in turn provided hard information needed by Government officials, planners, tourism interests, farmers and others who have an impact on the landscape.
It represented a “natural archive” of the many species that live and have lived here as far back as 1816, he said. While there were more than 31,000 distinct species here, from algae to eagles, there were at least another 10,000 yet to be discovered and detailed, he said.
Pollinating bees were an example of nature contributing services essential to humans, said Dr Eugenie Regan, a co-editor of the report with Dr Lysaght and Dr Úna FitzPatrick.
Individual details of where a species has been recorded could also be integrated with maps and overhead images of the land using the latest technology, Dr Lysaght said.
The centre currently holds 1.6 million records related to the species found here.
These records in turn have been accumulated by bringing together 60 national databases from Government agencies, the universities, non-governmental agencies and from individuals, Dr Regan said.
The centre also released a second report detailing “knowledge gaps” in the records that currently exist.
A panel of biodiversity experts identified a number of “key gaps” including the development of national checklists of marine fish, sponges and fungi, among others. There are at least 7,000 species of fungi and algae yet to be discovered, the centre says.
Visit the centre’s website at http://biodiversity.biodiversityireland.ie