IWT NEWS

ACTIVITY UPDATE By Kieran Flood, IWT Coordinator

IWT Members’

Wildlife Photo of the Year

Congratulation to Andrea Hunt, who is the winner of the 2020 IWT Members' Wildlife Photo of the Year competition, with her fantastic photo capturing the magic of a bumblebee foraging in mid-air. The image illustrates one of nature’s most important partnerships in sharp detail, that of plants and their pollinating insect partners. Note the pollen grains falling from the flower and the bee’s pollen baskets (known as corbiculae) on her back legs. 2020 was our first year running this competition. We introduced the competition as another way to engage you - our members, - to showcase the wildlife of Ireland and to give out some prizes to our fantastic membership base. We will be running the competition once more in 2021 so keep an eye out for details in the magazine and online. You can see the competition shortlist of 10 amazing photographs on pages 34 and 35 of this issue. Thank you to all of you who entered this completion.

CAMPAIGN UPDATE By Pádraic Fogarty

 Illustration by Jacek Matsiak

Imagining a nature-filled Ireland

It’s four years since my book, ‘Whittled Away – Ireland’s Vanishing Nature’ was published and my main motivation for writing it at that time was to convey the full extent to which nature in this country has disappeared. While we still have some way to go, there’s no doubt that the last four years have seen a step change in our conversation about biodiversity loss.

The Dáil declared a climate and biodiversity emergency in 2019 so in many ways you can say that it is official. The media really struggle with the idea of mass extinction and biodiversity loss and I suppose that can be said of the climate side of the shop also. But it’s undeniable that progress has been made. ‘Whittled Away’ devoted space to the solutions to these issues – rewildling, marine protected areas and the like – but I felt that there was a project in delving deeper into these solutions. And so ‘Shaping New Mountains’ was conceived.

It’s split into two parts. The second part expands on six ‘big ideas’ for bringing nature back including the Wild Atlantic Rainforest in Cork and Kerry, transforming Dublin into a truly ‘natural capital’, the Shannon Wilderness Park, the Ulster Shark Coast, the Pearl Valley Farmland where we see a new agriculture helping to restore populations of the critically endangered freshwater pearl mussel, and Bear County – a vision for rewilding in Connemara and West Mayo.

In many ways, these ideas are self-explanatory but what I tried to do was to get into the nuts and bolts. What’s actually required? In searching for these answers I went to farmers, politicians, scientists, community activists, wildlife rangers and more. I travelled the length and breadth of Ireland from Arranmore Island in Donegal to the River Blackwater valley in Waterford, from the Phoenix Park in

CAMPAIGN UPDATE By Pádraic Fogarty

Dublin to the tip of the Beara Peninsula in Cork. I found myself having conversations that quickly veered off from nature conservation onto farm wages, social isolation, inequality and urban deprivation and from habitats to overfishing. In other words, people must be central to any solutions to our environmental problems.

The first part of the project though is perhaps the more important one. Why is it that we have a biodiversity crisis in the first place?

Nearly everyone will tell you that nature is important, essential even, so why is there so much apathy when it comes to its destruction? Why do we see it as acceptable to pollute rivers or drive species to extinction to sustain certain parts of the economy? In the 1950s and 60s Ireland was trying to reverse emigration and develop export markets to access hard currency, so burning the bogs or planting swathes of conifer monocultures had a certain logic, even if it was culturally and ecologically insensitive. But what’s our excuse today? Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world… how much richer And I found what has become one of my favourite books on nature, ‘Laudato Si’ by Pope Francis.

And what the last two years have taught me is that we need an ethical revolution to build a new relationship with nature. This is not as far-fetched as it might first sound, after all, we have had a number of ethical revolutions in Ireland in recent decades (think same-sex marriage or abortion). And the basis of the revolution? It must be a combination of education and change to the constitution to recognise the rights of nature and the rights of people to a healthy environment.

To find out more, check out Shaping New Mountains on the IWT website where it is being serialised in text and audio, or you can find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

The Arterial Drainage Act

do we need to be? At the end of January, the IWT launched a petition to reform the Arterial Drainage Act of 1945. This piece of legislation is one of the

There was a belief some years back that, due to poor levels of data most important causes of damage to our river systems and is not fit and monitoring, that once we had all the right for the 21st Century. This is largely because information then we would make better "RIVERS DON’T WANT the Office of Public Works (OPW) is required decisions. The National Biodiversity Data TO BE STRAIGHT AND to ‘maintain’ 11,500km of our rivers in a Centre was established in 2007 to address this, but its reports and findings have made little difference to decision-making. DEEP AND SO, OVER TIME, TREES AND permanently drained and straightened state. In the years following the passing of the Arterial Drainage Act, heavy machinery was

Since the 1970s we have been amassing a OTHER VEGETATION sent into whole river catchments – not to body of environmental laws on everything WILL GROW AND protect towns and homes, but to create more from water pollution to planning and habitats THE DEPTH OF THE farmland. Rivers like the Boyne in Meath, to overfishing. Yet it hasn’t mattered a jot – an article in the Irish Independent newspaper in January of this year quoted judge Anthony Collins saying that the state has shown RIVER WILL REDUCE. BUT UNDER THE ACT, ‘MAINTENANCE’ MEANS the Clare in Galway and the Brosna in Westmeath were deepened, widened and artificially straightened in order to dry out the flood plains for cattle or crops. an “astonishing reluctance” to comply THE OPW MUST SEND Rivers don’t want to be straight and deep with environmental rules and regulations that IN THE DIGGERS EVERY and so, over time, trees and other vegetation they themselves signed up to. Yet there is COUPLE OF YEARS will grow and the depth of the river will no general outrage among the public for this delinquency. The idea of the ‘web of life’ is an old TO RE-INFLICT THIS DAMAGE. IT’S BONKERS." reduce. But under the Act, ‘maintenance’ means the OPW must send in the diggers every couple of years to re-inflict this metaphor. There is great wisdom in the phrase damage. It’s bonkers. that we all recognise. It has led to the understanding that biological Many people in Ireland have grown up believing that rivers need life is a delicate balancing act – with every species unknowingly to be ‘cleaned out’ and that flooding is a result of the state not doing regulating all the others. Yet we don’t see ourselves as part of its job. In fact, the OPW ‘maintenance’ work – by prioritising farmland that web, and we don’t seem to recognise that, in Ireland at least, the over property – is increasing flood risk. Add to that the increasing ‘carefully balanced ecosystem’ doesn’t exist and hasn’t existed for impact of climate breakdown, with predicted greater intensity of a very long time: all of our ecosystems are in a collapsed state. rainfall episodes (see what happened in Clifden, Co. Galway in Why then, if nature is as vital as ecologists say, do Irish people enjoy September of last year) and you have more rain falling on more one of the highest standards of living compared to nearly every degraded rivers which then have catastrophic effects for people. other country? Flooding is a not a problem that can simply be solved. We must

If we’re to really address the climate and biodiversity emergency learn to live with flooding while doing what we can to reduce its we really must resolve these paradoxes. To do this I spoke to some peaks and protecting property where we can. This will mean some people who you might not normally associate with addressing level of hard engineering (though we might hope that the OPW can problems in nature conservation – a nun, a priest and an eco-feminist! make these installations less ugly). Natural flood defences will take

 Arterial Drainage Act. Credit, Mike Brown

time and cannot promise that flooding won’t happen. Currently our land uses, from forestry and peat extraction to farming, promote flooding by reducing the ability of soil to absorb and store water. Changing this requires an entire overhaul of land-use policies, something that is beyond the remit of the OPW alone.

But the OPW can be modernised and repurposed. It can carry out its works in a more transparent way and it must come into compliance with environmental law. Environmental groups shouldn’t have to fight for these things. A reformed Arterial Drainage Act would do away with the ‘maintenance’ requirement and enable the OPW to restore bends, ox-bow lakes, natural meanders and flood plains.

Farming subsidies, which need to be radically reformed anyway, should reward farmers for rewilding river systems and holding on to the water so that it stays out of people’s homes and businesses. When any new flood scheme is planned the OPW must be compelled to implement naturebased solutions and only resort to hard engineering when there is no other option. It’s unacceptable that the public is paying for all this river destruction and then also paying for the flood defences and water purification downstream, when nature could be doing this for us.

In February, the IWT met with then Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine in charge of the OPW, Fine Gael’s Patrick O’Donovan, along with other environmental groups. He told us that every option would be on the table and assured us that we would receive a considered response to our proposal to reform the Arterial Drainage Act.

At the time of writing, we had just over 3,500 signatures to our petition and we will be delivering these to minister O’Donovan as well as the Oireachtas petition committee. But we need more so please sign up at https://my.uplift.ie/petitions/reform-the-arterial-drainage-act

Or you can go one step further by writing to your local TD asking them to support this campaign.

National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS)

IWT members will be aware that the reform of the NPWS is long overdue. As we go to press, I am happy to report that Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Malcolm Noonan, has announced the launch of this review. The IWT lobbied hard for this in the run-up to the general election in February 2020 and the final text of the Programme for Government commits to “review the remit, status and funding of the NPWS, to ensure that it is playing an effective role in delivering its overall mandate and enforcement role in the protection of wildlife”.

It will be led by Dr Jane Stout, Professor in Botany at the School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin (Chairperson) and former Environmental Protection Agency Director Dr Micheál Ó Cinnéide (Deputy Chair). In a press statement, the minister said “ensuring that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is properly resourced, staffed and equipped to lead Ireland’s response to the biodiversity emergency is one of my key priorities as Minister of State. In 2020, NPWS’s funding was 70% down on what it had been before the financial crisis in 2008. I increased its funding by 80% in Budget 2021, but there is much more to do. The scale of this Government’s ambition for nature is unprecedented, and the recommendations of this strategic review will be critical in enabling us to meet that ambition.”

According to the statement the review will comprise three phases, including 1) an extensive stakeholder engagement process (both internal and external), 2) an assessment of NPWS capacity, resourcing, staffing, governance and other key operational aspects, and 3) a comparative desktop analysis of resources/structures of similar organisations in other jurisdictions and an overview of the role and responsibilities of other state bodies and their relationship with NPWS.

It is anticipated that the review process will be completed this summer, with publication of the report and its key recommendations to follow.

A review of the NPWS was carried out by Grant Thornton consultants in 2009, at the end of the economic crash. This made some important recommendations, particularly around governance, but which were not acted on. Over 10 years on, circumstances have changed significantly and we need to be a lot more ambitious for what we want from any new nature conservation agency.

This review must result in meaningful change on the ground and we look forward to engaging in the consultation process.

 Humpback Whale

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs)

The lack of a coherent network of MPAs in Ireland is another long-running issue. It was in March of 2017 that then-minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney, addressed a conference organised by the Sustainable Water Network (SWAN) and gave a commitment to bring forward legislation by the end of that year which would address planning in the marine environment, including MPAs. That didn’t happen. In October of 2019, an expert group was established, chaired by Dr Tasman Crowe of University College Dublin, to advise the government on meeting its MPA commitments. Its work was delayed due to Covid-19 but in October 2020 it delivered its report to Minister Darragh O’Brien at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage (who has responsibility for planning and MPA designation). With the formation of the new government last summer, there is clearly a new (and very welcome!) impetus to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets and, as part of this, a renewed urgency to address outdated marine planning laws. However, the Marine Planning and Development Bill, which will be before the Dáil shortly, has excised all mention of MPAs. Meanwhile, the expert MPA report was finally published in late January, only after the minister sat on it for three whole months. A consultation on the report only started in mid-February and is to run for five months. In all, it will have taken nearly two years between the appointment of the expert group and the end of the public consultation. And then there will be further delays to consider the replies and decide on an approach. If – as looks likely – entirely new legislation is needed for the designation of MPAs – then it could be many more years before we see the process of actual designation starting. I don’t think you need to be too cynical to notice that the authorities "THE IWT LOBBIED HARD FOR THIS are deliberately slow pedalling IN THE RUN-UP TO THE GENERAL their way through this! ELECTION IN FEBRUARY 2020 AND THE FINAL TEXT OF THE PROGRAMME FOR Evidently, the mentality seems to be that the development of offshore wind installations GOVERNMENT COMMITS TO “REVIEW must be allowed to fire ahead THE REMIT, STATUS AND FUNDING and that the designation of OF THE NPWS, TO ENSURE THAT IT MPAs can’t be allowed to IS PLAYING AN EFFECTIVE ROLE IN impede this. Our fear is that DELIVERING ITS OVERALL MANDATE AND ENFORCEMENT ROLE IN THE MPAs will then have to squeeze into whatever is left over after the offshore energy industry PROTECTION OF WILDLIFE." has taken their pick of sites. The IWT, along with our colleagues in other environmental groups, made these points to the Oireachtas committee reviewing the Marine Planning and Development Bill in a presentation to them in December. We also highlighted how the approach is not compliant with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the Maritime Spatial Planning Directive, which clearly stipulate that planning in the marine environment must be based on an ‘ecosystem approach’. In the absence of MPAs therefore, the much needed deployment of offshore renewable energy is adopting a high risk strategy. We hope this can be rectified before it is too late..