Anja Murray: Up to our knees in dead canaries

Every local authority in Ireland will have a biodiversity officer within three years but it’s up to each of us to get involved, spend time in nature, forge connections, and demand that those in power step up to the challenges at hand

Environmental campaigners from the Irish Wildlife Trust and Extinction Rebellion called on the Irish Government to introduce legislation in the form of a Biodiversity Act at a protest outside the National Biodiversity Conference in Dublin Castle. Picture: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Growing up in the Wicklow Mountains in the 1980s was a wonder for me. I have vivid memories of adventuring among yellow gorse and purple heather; and playing along big banks of hedgerow trees that separated sheep-grazed pastures. I had a favourite tree for climbing. I remember being lifted up to peek into swallows’ nests in the old stone shed, stunned by the loud squawks of baby birds, mouths agape for food. I followed frogs through the rushes down by the stream.

This daily exposure to nature was not uncommon then, though now, whether as children or adults, being immersed in nature is only an occasional experience, at best. And this, many believe, is one of the reasons why we, as a society, are sleepwalking through the collapse of ecosystems all around us.