An obligation we must discharge: Fix the weir to save the salmon

Humanity’s impact on the world is relentless and nearly always destructive.

Every year that passes our negative impact on other species grows. That paradigm may be inevitable but our response need not be.

We can intervene — we must intervene — to protect endangered species. The Atlantic salmon, once so abundant — cod were too — that it is almost impossible to grasp how populations have collapsed. There are many reasons, all of them man-made. One of them was highlighted in Fermoy, Co Cork, on Saturday.

The town weir has straddled the Blackwater for centuries but it has been allowed fall into disrepair.

Great, unnatural gravel banks have built up below it and today’s salmon, the remnants of a great population, struggle to cross it to reach their breeding grounds. No matter how those responsible — Cork County Council — squirm this is an act of criminal neglect.

The hazards to salmon migration must be removed and structure to guarantee passage put in place. If the council does not have funds to do this then central government must intervene because once the salmon are gone they are gone.

It may be too late to help this year’s Blackwater salmon but next year’s run must be protected. That the State, and too many of us, imagine that these interventions are optional rather than obligatory is one of the reasons we are such bad custodians of our precariously-balanced natural world.

Let’s be better citizens of our world by saving Blackwater salmon.