Heritage & Habitat | The Irish Times

The elephant hawkmoth caterpillar. When alarmed, it pulls in the snout and puffs up its eye-spots to look as much like an angry snake as a caterpillar can. Illustration: Michael Viney

Fuschia bushes a promising habitat for the elephant hawkmoth caterpillar

Moths and butterflies often highly selective in the plants that feed their caterpillar

The behaviour of raccoons is not that different from that of Ireland’s native pine martens. Illustration: Michael Viney

The raccoons of Macroom: Look out for these escapees of the pet trade

In Ireland, raccoons join a long list of introduced and invasive mammals

Last month, a study was published in the journal Science assessing the potential of aiming for a trillion trees on the planet

Could mass planting of trees provide a climate change solution?

Forestation a major option for storing carbon but greater coverage could have adverse impacts

Herring: Illustration: Michael Viney

The unsung fate of the ocean’s Atlantic herring

Fishery proving uniquely destructive to the fish’s spawning grounds in the shelving Atlantic bays of Ireland

In reconstructing the loss of the planet’s historic ice, the projections of future impacts on coasts and sea levels is becoming a lot more certain. Illustration: Michael Viney

As the ice melts, what will become of our planet?

Conference in Dublin to explore how Quaternary research helps model Earth’s future

Ireland’s native natterjack toad. Illustration: Michael Viney

Irish sightings of the common toad pose ecological risks

The common toad – Bufo bufo – may spell competition for Ireland’s native natterjack

‘Roseraie de l’ Hay solicits me with perfume’. Illustration: Michael Viney

‘Rewilding’ sounds so much better than merely ‘letting things go’

The sad rationing of my energies means the garden has been largely left to its own devices

The red-billed, exuberantly yelping chough. Happily our choughs compare well with the bird’s severe decline in western Europe. Illustration: Michael Viney

Michael Viney: New insect casualties arise from cattle doses untested in the field

Livestock parasites are showing increasing resistance to drugs, notably in Ireland’s sheep

Mammals such as foxes and pine martens make an autumn feast of all the blackberries they can reach.

What the bramble lacks in hectarage, it makes up for in variety

Intriguing ecological answer emerges for the origin and manuring of new and dense thickets

Stoat on dry stone wall. Illustration: Michael Viney

Home to lizards and lichens: the distinctive ecosystem of dry stone walls

As the climate changes the 400,000km of stone walls in the Irish countryside need care

Ruminant animals such as cattle burp some 40 per cent of greenhouse gases. Illustration: Michael Viney

Michael Viney: Live by the sward

Researchers have turned to the promise of multi-species grassland

The beaver may never have reached Ireland, but it’s an alien we could well do with. Illustration: Michael Viney

How can Irish people help stave off the end of civilisation?

Nuanced rewilding approaches can help but a less piecemeal approach will be required

Emiliania huxleyi, a type of phytoplankton which could prove useful in the fight against climate change. Photograph: Michael Viney

Plankton, salt sprays and other potential solutions to climate change

One team of scientists say spraying salt water into the atmosphere could protect Arctic ice

Broad bean flowers. Illustration: Michael Viney

Where are all the insects gone? My unease deepens year by year

The UN report on nature’s destruction has left humans dumbstruck or indifferent

Old Irish Goats: As the last remaining goats of their kind, the animals warrant protection, not least as an irreplaceable genetic resource for future breeding. Illustration: Michael Viney

Mulranny the proud last stronghold of the Old Irish Goat

Recognition of their venerable bloodlines has swept them into attention as a rare and authentic Irish breed

The biggest specimens of lion’s mane are in Arctic and north Atlantic waters, and one reason for its abundance off Leinster could be that colder water at the bottom of the western Irish Sea suits successful production from the polyps. Illustration: Michael Viney

Jellyfish make swimmers’ lives a misery but how important are they to the ocean?

The sea around Ireland has a host of gelatinous species - many come in bizarre geometrical shapes and assemblies

River Barrow prepares for next hatching season of lampreys

River and sea lampreys differ greatly in size and in the size and pattern of their teeth

Catkins: such is the way spring rolls across Ireland that birches in Cork are fully clothed well in advance of their Antrim siblings. Illustration: Michael Viney

The sadness of knowing that some day spring will come too soon

Climate change brings with it timing mismatches that threaten some species’ survival

Mistle thrush song. Drawing: Michael Viney

The song of birds has engaged the human psyche for centuries

‘You could argue that blackbird sings the words, whereas mistle thrush speaks them’

Basking shark. Between 1946 and 1997, the total cull from the northeast Atlantic population was more than 100,000 mature individuals, mostly female. Illustration: Michael Viney

Stark decline of basking shark numbers a cautionary tale

Giant creature now an endangered species in northeast Atlantic after a cull that lasted half a century

A new strategy will give the brown crab greater time for reproduction, and new, larger sizes for conservation have been proposed by fishermen

A new chapter in Irish inshore life is about to begin

As large trawlers are restricted, ‘low-impact fishers’ take up a role in the coastal ecosystem

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