Podcast Corner: Pádraic Fogarty leads the way with shows for Irish nature-lovers
Whittled Away by Padraic Fogarty
Leading ecologist Pádraic Fogarty follows up his 2017 book, Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature, with this podcast series from the Irish Wildlife Trust. He says while Whittled Away did talk about some of the solutions to ecological problems outlined in the book, he felt like there was an opportunity to elaborate on these more.
From birdlife to rewilding 'Bear Country', pearl valleys to the Ulster shark coast, the nine episodes take a comprehensive look around the wildlife of Ireland. Though the introductions are a little unwieldy, featuring quotes from literature, and the episodes overlong, all clocking in at 40-minutes plus, the knowledge on offer here is inimitable.
At the start of the first episode of Shaping New Mountains, Fogarty asks us to imagine if all the birds disappeared from Ireland - a particularly worrying dystopia for In Your Nature pairing Ricky Whelan and Niall Hatch of Birdwatch Ireland, you'd imagine.
"We generally talk about birds a lot to each other anyway, so we may as well let other people eavesdrop on that," Hatch says at the outset of this six-episode season - three seasons are planned for 2021, with more due in summer and autumn.
Episode two is an aural delight, examining the dawn chorus with an abundance of information. The following episodes explore topics such as the opportunities for damaged bogland habitats and the wonders of wildflowers. The spring season is over so expect from episodes of In Your Nature next month.
We've covered this show before and it's still going strong more than two years after its debut. The enthusiasm of Collie Ennis continues to be the highlight, no more evident than in the episode talking about the thylacine, aka the Tasmanian tiger, which had been declared extinct in 1936 but hopes were briefly raised recently with a potential sighting in the wild. There's a lot of guilt out there that we ended its existence, says Ennis, who quickly reports that the sightings were sadly not true.
From the Native Woodland Trust, this series discusses - yes, you've guessed it - Irish woodlands. Fogarty and Ennis both actually feature here, the Beara rainforest also crops up. Orla ní Dhúill, a conservation and PR officer, is the host of the series, which is at its best when it's nerdiest, such as talking about a project mapping ancient and long-established woodland. Gentle music plays in the background throughout, lulling the listener in.
