Sir, – In support of Donal Sheehan’s letter (September 12th) on wildlife in the Irish countryside, there are now huge tracts of land that have been what is euphemistically called “tidied up” . . . bogs, wetlands, hedgerows, the lot.
In my part of the country we have lost the following in the last 30 years: the corncrake; the cuckoo; the curlew; the skylark; the swift; the grey partridge; the long-eared owl; the red squirrel; the yellowhammer; the gold crest; the meadow pipit; the house sparrow; the green plover (once in their thousands, literally, but now in a few pathetic little groups of eight or so); the golden plover (as above); the elm tree; the speckled wood butterfly; the orange tip butterfly (I lie, I saw one last year); and, I am sure, a host of insects.
If farmers go on spraying pesticides as a precaution twice a year, this degradation is inevitable. I was a wheat grower myself and I know it is unnecessary.
In evolutionary terms, this has happened in the twinkling of an eye. Perhaps it’s a case of the bigger the subsidy, the bigger the bulldozer. – Yours, etc,