environment and climate report
All-Ireland Pollinator Plan: Boosting biodiversity Úna FitzPatrick, Project Manager of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan (AIPP), discusses how the plan, now in its second iteration, can encourage biodiversity action across all sectors. “We have amazing biodiversity in Ireland, but biodiversity loss is a huge problem,” assesses FitzPatrick, who sets out that often the biggest challenge is that the complexity of biodiversity means that people and organisations find it difficult to feel empowered to know how to tackle it. FitzPatrick works for the National Biodiversity Data Centre (NBDC), which manages information on Ireland’s wildlife and has recognised that identifying simple vehicles, such as a focus on pollinators, can be used to carry the biodiversity message to a wide audience. Setting the context of the challenge, the project manager says that Ireland has approximately 31,500 species living within 117 habitats. Of the habitats assessed, only 15 per cent are deemed to be in a good state, while 17 per cent of species are threatened with extinction from Ireland. On the reasoning for the focus on pollinators, FitzPatrick explains: “Pollinators are an element of biodiversity that people understand and relate to and the need for actions can be communicated as a clean and simple message. Additionally, changes can be easily monitored and importantly, protecting pollinators has knock-on benefits for biodiversity generally.”
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Around 90 per cent of the world’s food is provided by 100 crops, 71 of which are pollinated by bees, and Ireland’s value of insect pollination to food crops is estimated to be up to €59 million per year. The Project Manager explains that while an awareness of the role of pollinators in food production exists, what is often overlooked is the impact of pollinators on wider biodiversity. A total of 78 per cent of Ireland’s wild plants benefit from insect pollination. “Wild plants sustain all other biodiversity, as well as providing carbon sequestration and flood mitigation services, not to mention the joy, and health benefits, of places where we can connect with nature, the importance of which has been highlighted by the pandemic,” she says. The plight of pollinators is aligned with decline in Ireland’s biodiversity. A prime example of which is the island’s 101 bee species. Aside from the honeybee, most commonly farmed, 100 of the bee species are wild but one-third are threatened with extinction from Ireland. NBDC data shows a significant decline in the abundance of common bumblebees since 2012. FitzPatrick assesses: “Rare species are disappearing through loss of semi-natural habitats and common species are declining in abundance as a consequence of how we manage the rest of the landscape.”
