Cleaning up our streams

IRELAND is speckled with small lakes and streams, about which little enough is known scientifically.

Anyone who grew up in the country in the 60s and 70s will have memories of catching fish in the little rivers that were everywhere and that seemed to have an abundance of brown trout. Now, the trout are scarce, if there at all, as many waterways are polluted.

There’s growing interest in small water bodies and that august institution, the Royal Irish Academy, is putting a new focus on them and is encouraging research as well as action to reduce pollution before we lose such a vital part of our freshwater resources.