Anja Murray: Is a river alive? And if so, does it have rights?

Two new EPA reports document an ongoing steady decline in water quality across Ireland's lakes, rivers and estuaries as pollution levels continue to rise. A whopping 44% of Irish rivers now have nitrogen concentrations that exceed healthy limits

The River Blackwater in Mallow, County Cork. A ‘corporation, in the eyes of the law, is an entity with legal standing and a suite of rights’, so it is hard to argue against a global movement in which rivers are considered worthy of rights. Picture: Dan Linehan

Spending time near a river gives us a peek into the life of their waters. In the uplands, dippers can sometimes be seen bobbing on a boulder in the midst of turbulent, peat-coloured waters. These are birds with a unique ability to walk along the bottom of a river, submerged beneath the current, clinging to stones on the river bed with exceptionally strong legs and feet, while picking about for caddis fly larvae and other invertebrates that live beneath the water.

Being entirely dependent on the life in a river for their sustenance, dippers are understandably very sensitive to changes in water quality. The answer to the question of whether or not a river is alive, from the perspective of a dipper, is fairly obvious. A dead river would be unable to sustain them for even a day, without the abundance of in stream invertebrates upon which they depend for their daily food.