ANOTHER LIFE:THISTLEDOWN drifts through gaping doorways; grass springs up on unpaved roads; brambles lean in from the fences with this autumn's rich abundance of fruit.
Thus nature haunts Ireland’s ghost estates with memories of lost meadows, hedgerows and leafy neighbourhoods. But landscape, once changed, is soon forgotten, and in the sullen aftermath all talk of “greener” planning can seem mere blackberry pie in the sky.
Still, national life grinds on, and Brussels keeps up the pressure for a better treatment of the countryside. No, “biodiversity loss” didn’t stop by 2010, so let’s make it 2020. Press on with river-basin plans, agri-environment schemes, landscape policy, climate mitigation and the rest.
In all this Comhar keeps its nerve and missionary zeal. It was founded and funded a decade ago as an arm of the State’s conscience, the Sustainable Development Council. Land use, waterways and the natural world need as much sustainable care as anything else, and for more than a decade Comhar has been selling the worth of nature’s “ecosystem goods and services” to economic and social life.
In 2008, stakeholders (who else?) from north and south attended a big conference, Biodiversity and Planning: Building Connectivity for Sustainability. And now, after much further research, we have Comhar’s final report, Creating Green Infrastructure for Ireland: Enhancing Natural Capital for Human Wellbeing. To persuade the powerful, the superior syntax with which planners and administrators keep their distance from the great outdoors is needed.
“Comhar SDC,” we are told, “is convinced there is a need to proactively develop Green infrastructure and ecological connectivity and address fragmentation and that this will have the dual function of enhancing biodiversity and improving resilience and adaptation to climate change.”
Well, yes, and this report should help it along no end, for people who can tune into it.
We need a joined-up countryside. To keep its populations healthy, much wildlife needs to move about from one safe place to another, mixing and mating. And, as global warming pushes north, many Irish species will need to move house ahead of summer drought and heat. Hedgerows, river banks, riparian woodland, linear parks and wetlands are the links and corridors that make this possible.
Our special areas of conservation are often widely separated refuges in an otherwise inhospitable countryside. In developments outside of them, protection of natural ecosystems and habitats is piecemeal, served at best by a succession of environmental-impact assessments.
Comhar is now urging a national green infrastructure, a network of green spaces enshrined at the heart of planning policy and decision-making, from local development plans to national spatial strategy.
Its keenest argument, as always under Prof Frank Convery’s chairmanship, is what’s also in it for human-society goods and services, such as water purification, flood control, carbon capture, and food and timber production, along with recreation and the virtues of a sense of place, open spaces and presence of the wild.
Combining all this on maps calls for integrating a mass of data, much of which already exists. Comhar’s report actually makes a start on such a map for Ireland, overlaying natural and “quality of life” features to depict a “Multi-Functional Green Infrastructure”.
It also offers three pilot studies that illustrate the process.
On the east coast Fingal County Council plans to use the Broadmeadow estuary and its river catchments to link green spaces in an increasingly developed area. In northeast Dublin city the existing gem of Bull Island will radiate “greenways” along rivers and the Royal Canal, and the railway line become a valued link for biodiversity. Even the Brent geese grazing the parks in winter are counted in on the planning.
The third case study moves to Offaly-Westmeath, where a vast network of cutaway bogs, eskers and created lakes has already invited prospects of a new midland “wilderness” or, most recently, as a place to hold water for Dublin, pumped from Shannon floods. As the most effective carbon store of all terrestrial ecosystems, the peatland may even warrant re-wetting: the Comhar report cites a project in Belarus that is flooding an initial 42,000 hectares of drained peatland.
It’s in the countryside that “stakeholder involvement” winning over the farmers is essential, and Comhar urges any intervention in land use as a chance to benefit from change. After the end to the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps), the government’s new agri-environment scheme still awaits approval from Europe. In place of the “whole farm” undertakings of Reps comes a farmer’s choice of payment for specific actions, such as fencing off riverbanks for the growth of bushes and trees, letting hay meadows mature and seed, or protecting wild bird habitat.
From such small steps, along with the grander designs, must our green infrastructure grow.
Eye on nature
I watched a large fly, mostly black with a wide white band across its midsection, at the entry to a wasps’ nest. It made a number of forays towards the nest, each time retreating as wasps flew in and out. It eventually entered despite the busy but unconcerned wasps, and it did not emerge inside half an hour.
James Glynn, Claregalway, Co Galway
It was a banded hoverfly, Volucella pellucens, which enters wasps’ nests unchallenged by the hosts and lays her eggs. The larvae hatch and drop to the floor, where they scavenge for food. It could be a symbiotic relationship.
A gang of sparrows use dry soil in my new flower bed, to take joyous dust baths together, digging holes in the bed and flinging soil and stones all over the path. If they disturb more bulbs I may consider the merits of sparrow pie.
Michael O’Malley, Lucan, Co Dublin
On August 24th I watched an eagle circle over Lough Bofin, heading in the direction of Maam Cross. An incredible display.
Brendan O’Sullivan, Cashel, Connemara
A sea eagle has been hanging out in that area in recent months.
I saw a mink holding a rat by the scruff of the neck run across the road into the ditch.
Richard Beamish, Rathcormac, Co Cork
Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo; e-mail viney@anu.ie. Please include a postal address
