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ACTIVITY UPDATE
MEMBERS ACTIVITY UPDATE By IWT Coordinator Kieran Flood
TOGETHER OUTDOORS AGAIN!
This spring at the Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) we remained busy with our online engagement, such as our fantastic webinars and wildlife articles. However, the warmer weather and changing circumstances also saw the IWT make a welcome return to inperson events and field trips. We ran a field trip as part of our Erasmus+ project with Galway Community College and our branches hosted some great events.
The IWT is a partner in an Erasmus+ funded project in which we are supporting students from the Galway Community College to research and produce publications on endangered Irish species. The project is running across three countries: Ireland, Spain and Croatia. This spring it was Ireland’s turn to host a field trip for our international partner from the Croatian and Spanish schools. Galway Community College is situated on the south side of Galway City so we decided to take the students to a nearby site of international conservation importance: the Burren. It was a fantastic day out.
For more information visit ww.galwaycc.ie/page/ErasmusProject. To download a copy of the Species Report visit https:// iwt.ie/what-we-do/education/galway-erasmus.
En route to the Burren, we stopped at a local park to give the students a practical lesson in pollinating insect identification. This was a great success with all the students getting to try their hand with the butterfly nets and up-close bee identification. It being spring, lots of queens were on the wing much to the excitement of the students.
The weather turned on us as we reached our destination of Gortlecka crossroads in the Burren National Park but the brave guides of the National Parks and Wildlife Service fought the April rain and gales to guide us through this amazing landscape. Due to the harsh weather and cold temperature there was not too much flora or fauna on show but the Burren landscape speaks for itself. The Burren is formed from limestone made up of compressed ancient marine life and today much of the exposed rock one encounters contains fossils visible to the naked eye. The fossils we found in the rocks were of great amazement to our guests. So even on a wet and windy day the Burren always has something to offer to the interested mind. We look forward to welcoming our guests back to Ireland next year and hopefully to better weather.
Waterways are great refuges for wildlife and our Dublin and Limerick Branches have started the year with guided walks along the rivers and canals of those counties with visits to the Shannon, the Liffey and the Grand Canal. Our Limerick branch went in search of the botanical life of the banks of the Shannon within Limerick City such as the unusual summer snowflake.
Our branches are volunteer run and we are extremely thankful to all the volunteers for the work they do to organise events to engage and educate our IWT members and the public. We are planning to increase the level of our in-person events over the year and build back to and above pre-pandemic activity. Keep an eye on https://iwt.ie/events/ to find out if there are any events near you.
e IWT is a partner organisation of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan and this summer our People for Bees programme returns to in-person events with bee conservation and identi cation workshops being delivered around the country. People for Bees is all about sharing knowledge with our members and the general public on how to take action to monitor and protect bees. e project delivers workshops on the identi cation of common Irish bumblebees, bee monitoring techniques and bee habitat creation as well as habitat protection. Check out our website and social media to see which People for Bees events are happening near you.
People for Bees is a great programme because it empowers people to take action. Attendees of our workshops learn how to conduct bee surveys and to share their records with the National Biodiversity Data Centre. Once these skills are learnt attendees can continue to share more and more biodiversity records from their locality thus contributing vital species data to the conservation e ort in Ireland as citizen scientists. e programme also encourages people to conserve local wildlife habitat and to create new habitat for pollinating insects. Habitat conservation and creation is a transferable skill and one could even call it an outlook as well as a skill. We hope that attendees of our People for Bees workshops will keep seeing their gardens and community spaces as potential wildlife habitat and continue to create and conserve. A erall we are in a biodiversity and species extinction crisis primarily due to habitat destruction and deterioration, so all action to protect habitat is of great value.
At the IWT our goal is to promote action. Our Mission is “to create a better future for Ireland’s biodiversity by motivating and supporting people to take action to protect biodiversity.” With this in mind we have started a new space on our website to share actions we can all take to protect biodiversity:- https://iwt.ie/action/
We work in advocacy, citizen science, education, and practical conservation. Each of these areas is an opportunity to take action for nature. It can be empowering, and sometimes even quite easy, to take action to a ect your individual area of in uence such as your garden. Encouragingly we are also seeing people come together to take action as a community. Actions on the individual and
Taking Action for Wildlife
community sphere of in uence are absolutely essential however all too o en the responsibility for saving the environment is placed solely on individuals and communities which can let others o the hook such as our local and national government.
Much of the action we really need to see to stop the biodiversity crisis needs to come from government. We need action on land use management, policies to support close to nature farming, a wellfunded state nature protection agency to enforce wildlife law, but how do we in uence the government? Well, you do this through your vote but if you want to do more you can also take part in public consultations. Public consultations are surveys about certain government plans and laws. Engaging in these consultations can send clear messages to decision makers that the people want genuine biodiversity action at the heart of government decisions. e IWT frequently engages in such consultation (as you will read in our campaign update) but you can have your voice heard too.
At the IWT we try our best to support people to take action to protect biodiversity
IWT YouTube Channel hits 1000
is Spring we celebrate reaching 1,000 subscribers on our IWT YouTube channel. As part of our communications work we publish videos on our YouTube channel on a regular basis. If you head over there now you will be able to watch back on all our IWT webinars. You can nd us at https://www. youtube.com/irishwildlifetrust.
at an individual, community and government level. We will strive to continue adding new actions to the ‘take action’ page of our website and to social media so that our members and the general public can be informed and inspired to keep taking action to protect wildlife whether it be gardening for nature, adding your voice to a public consultation or maybe even joining us on the streets for a demonstration. Keep an eye on https://iwt. ie/action/ and our social media for ideas of how to join the e ort to save nature.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE By Pádraic Fogarty
Peat mining hits political impasse… AGAIN
Small scale peat mining
In April, Minister for Transport, Environment, Climate and Communications and Green Party leader, Eamon Ryan, answered a parliamentary question on the banning of turf for commercial sale, confirming that the measure would go ahead this autumn. The move had been planned for some time and after previous attempts to ban smoky coal failed due to the threat of legal action from coal merchants. Burning dirty fuels results in the premature death of 1,300 people every year according to the Environmental Protection Agency. It was concluded that only a blanket ban on all dirty solid fuels, including smoky coal, turf and wet wood would survive legal challenge. Minister Ryan’s department conducted a public consultation on the measure in 2021 and had planned to pass the legislation later this year.
However, the announcement resulted in uproar from many of the usual quarters, particularly in the Fine Gael party, with politicians saying the move needs to be delayed. Many people in Ireland still depend upon turf for heating their homes with people generally contracting out the cutting of turf on banks where they have ‘turbary’ rights. This is generally portrayed as small-scale and low impact when compared with the large-scale industrial activities of Bord na Móna and others. The media plays along with this, typically illustrating articles on turf mining with pictures of people enjoying picnics on the bog or digging turf with the sleán… the traditional spade. However, the serious negative effect of turf mining for domestic use has been recognised. In 2015, the National Peatlands Strategy highlighted how this industry is unregulated, with a booming black market, uncertain property rights and lack of any environmental controls, e.g. where extraction is resulting in pollution of waterways. The Peatland Strategy committed to reviewing the regulatory regime to bring all peat mining
activities into line with environmental law, however this has not been acted upon. Even the regulation that prohibited the cutting of peat in raised bog Special Areas of Conservation over a decade ago is widely ignored. Politicians calling for more delays are effectively endorsing an unregulated, destructive commercial activity that is killing thousands of people. And that is not even to mention the carbon emissions spewing from the degraded peat. Minister Ryan and his Green Party colleagues were keen to point out that cutting turf for private, domestic use is not being banned, only the commercial sale of peat. But why are we not going all out to keep peat "IT IS ESTIMATED in the ground, regardless of its origins? It is estimated THAT UP TO that up to 400,000 people in 400,000 PEOPLE Ireland are at risk of fuel IN IRELAND ARE poverty, a figure which may AT RISK OF FUEL POVERTY, A FIGURE WHICH overlap to a degree with people who are dependent upon turf to heat their homes. There are already MAY OVERLAP TO schemes to support A DEGREE WITH retrofitting of homes, PEOPLE WHO including free retrofit for ARE DEPENDENT UPON TURF TO HEAT THEIR people receiving some welfare payments, as well as fully funded schemes for public housing. The main HOMES". issue with the scheme is that they need to own their home (many people in fuel poverty are in the rental market) and to receive some forms of welfare payment. However, this is not going far enough fast enough. My impression of the debate on this issue is that people are ready and willing to stop burning turf. The fond memories for days on the bog with flasks of tea and having the craic are not matched by a desire to be outdoors all day long footing turf. But the alternative energy sources must be there. The Green Party at least see the need for change, it’s depressing hearing other political parties calling for yet more delays to environmental action without any alternative solutions to our serious environmental and public health challenges.
CAMPAIGN UPDATE By Pádraic Fogarty THE WATER FRAMEWORK DIRECTIVE
Otter by Mike Brown
All life depends upon water and in Ireland a signi cant 88% of our Special Areas of Conservation and 90% of our Special Protection Areas have water dependent habitats and species. ese range from sea birds, important estuaries for wintering wading birds, sh, freshwater pearl mussels, otters and peatlands. Water is also vital for people’s health and our economy and this is the same water that is so vital to our wildlife.
Pollution and degradation of rivers, lakes and coastal ecosystems is not just a problem for birds and otters but something that directly impacts every person on this island. In 2019, 27 drinking water supplies had pesticide concentrations above required standards while at the end of 2021 15,500 people were on boil water notices for longer than a month. As I write this, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is advising against swimming at four beaches (Cli on in Galway, Merion Strand in Dublin, Lady’s Bay in Buncrana in Donegal and Balbriggan in Dublin) while the beaches.ie website recommends that “a er a heavy rainfall event it is important to avoid contact with the water for at least 48 hours to prevent the risk of getting a recreational water illness”. is is not because rain water is contaminated with microbes but because rain can overwhelm poorly-designed public sewers, which frequently combine surface run-o with foul wastewater, so leading to over ows and discharges of poorly – or completely untreated sewage. Although, with investment by Irish Water, the number of water bodies impacted by urban wastewater is decreasing, the EPA has highlighted that in 2020 12 of our large urban areas were not compliant with standards for wastewater treatment while in 2021 raw sewage from the equivalent of 75,000 people was owing into the environment every day from 34 towns and villages. ey have criticised Irish Water for continually missing targets to upgrade infrastructure that would eliminate these problems. e Water Framework Directive (WFD) is EU legislation that was approved in 2000,
Significant pressures At risk water bodies
yes, 22 years ago, and its aim was to achieve ‘good status’ of all water bodies by 2015. There could be exceptions to this but 2027 was the very latest deadline for compliance. Yet we are not only not meeting this target but, despite some local improvements, approximately half of our water bodies are failing to achieve good status and the situation overall is deteriorating. The biggest source of pollution – by a long shot – is agriculture, and in particular dairy expansion has placed enormous pressure on water quality from a combination of dung and artificial fertiliser. The beautiful rivers of the south and east, such as the Boyne, Slaney, Nore, Barrow, Suir and Blackwater are overwhelmed with nitrogen. But throughout the country, where the soil is heavy, phosphorous and sediment are also important pollutants.
The EPA has done impressive work in recent years to identify the kind of measures that are needed in different areas (phosphorus and sediment can be stopped by introducing buffers like woodland or wetlands while nitrogen must be stopped at source) however this information is not being transferred to the farm level where it is needed. An Agricultural Sustainability Support and Advisory Programme (ASSAP) has been set up to send advisors to farmers in some areas however this is not at the scale that is needed, is voluntary and there is no money for actual measures to be implemented. At the end of the day, our model of food production does not reward farmers for protecting water or even keeping existing patches of habitat that could buffer water pollution.
After agriculture, the next biggest pressure on water is physical modifications, that is, dams and barriers to movement and arterial drainage programmes that straighten and deepen rivers or strip them of their natural vegetation. This is mostly related to agriculture, even if it is not always carried out by farmers (the Office of Public Works is a major culprit here) but also over-engineered flood schemes that have destroyed rivers like the Bandon in Cork. After physical modifications we see forestry, urban wastewater, domestic septic tanks, peat mining, industry etc. The EPA calculates that 2,810 water bodies are at risk of more than one of these pressures. Essentially, every aspect of how we use land and dispose of our waste is driving a downward trajectory in water status.
The WFD was supposed to have addressed these problems through the development of River Basin Management Plans (RBMP). The RBMP was to have identified water problems and tackle them through a ‘programme of measures’. This year, the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage issued its draft of our third RBMP and this is due to be finalised by the end of 2022.
The IWT, along with our partners in SWAN (the Sustainable Water Network, an umbrella group which includes the IWT), held a series of webinars with some of Ireland’s top experts on the various issues including an explainer of the WFD. These are all available on our YouTube channel. At the end of March, we made our submission to the public consultation on the draft RBMP and this is available on our website. We called for a transformation of how we farm, including the introduction of a licencing system for large dairy operations, a reform of the Arterial Drainage Act and a feasibility study into the introduction of beavers to Ireland.
Above all we called for greater ambition (the draft RBMP does not aim to meet the requirements of the WFD) and greater policy coherence, in other words, that policies on farming, forests, peat and fishing are working towards environmental protection. Without that we will not see progress on reversing the degradation of our water bodies.
