Vandalism of landscape and natural history

Laying their eggs from March to June, cock stonechats will be threatened by the Heritage Bill 2016 allowing upland burning in march, writes Damien Enright.

On the morning of April 13, when I turned on my computer, I uttered a whoop of joy and rushed to tell my wife about a very welcome Press Release on my screen.

It said: “Following months of co-ordinated pressure and opposition in the Seanad led by Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, the Government has been forced to dilute highly controversial proposals in Heritage Bill 2016 ... the legislation that sought to extend the permitted cutting of hedgerows into August and the burning of uplands into March.

“This extension would cut across the nesting season and into a crucial food gathering period for bees and other pollinators. The Bill faced huge opposition from An Taisce, BirdWatch Ireland, the Irish Wildlife Trust, Hedgelaying Association of Ireland, the Federation of Irish Beekeepers and thousands of members of the public who signed petitions and wrote to express their strong concerns.”

Abandoning work, I brewed up a cup of tea and, expounding on the utter stupidity of the bill by Minister Heather Humphries in the first place, blessed our national guardian angels for having arranged brought a change of heart.

However, when I returned to my desk, I found an alarming new. “Please disregard previous press release.” It went on to say that while, after months of co-ordinated opposition, the Government had been forced to dilute the controversial proposals in the bill, a last-minute amendment from Ms Humphries at the final stage threatened to reverse much of the progress won. Senator Higgins was clearly disappointed. I was hopping mad.

Flying in the face of all the expert research indicating that hedgerow cutting into August would threaten the final eradication of the yellowhammer, an already red-listed bird, and March upland burning would accelerate a similar fate for skylark, hen harrier, red grouse and curlew, the minister entrusted with the preservation of our heritage had effectively licensed vandalism of the landscape and natural history that is the backdrop of our lives.

They are resources more valuable than all the tower houses and standing stones. They are ever-present, our balm and our recreation, but are already threatened everywhere.

Is it not clear to Ms Humphries and the ‘patriots’ that comprise our government and opposition that a bird can be more emblematic than a historic building, that more Irish men and women — and Irish children — hear birdsong than ever see Dublin Castle or the Rock of Cashel?

Curlews, to whose haunting cry our Irish souls respond, are part of our heritage, part of the soul of our people, part of our stories and music. We hear their lonely call in the plaintive notes of the fiddle, as we hear the skylark’s joy in the soaring strings.

Uplands provide nesting sites for curlews. They nest in April and they will not nest on burnt land, with bracken and heather blackened all around. Now, when it has come to pass that, as a result of land ‘improvements’ and industrial-scale turf-cutting, only 125 pairs of this once-common resident bird nest in Ireland (86% decline in 25 years), a bill is passed to burn the ground on which they nest.

Meanwhile, the same Bill is framed to legalise the ripping of branches from under the yellowhammer’s nest, the destruction of the blackberries, crab apples, maturing haws and sloes, wild-seeded grasses and wildflowers upon which the honey bees, butterflies and small mammals, voles and woodmice, hedgehogs and even hares rely.

To paraphrase the poet John Donne, “No hedgerow is an island”; it’s part of the main, a wildlife corridor and refuge. In this western, enlightened nation, thanks to the short-sightedness of our politicians, thousands of pollinators that have made the success of our agriculture possible will have their nests, breeding burrows and food sources crushed, torn apart and thrown to the four winds.

The reason given for extending the cutting season is, as always, road safety. This is fabrication. Already local councils can cut hedges in any month they please if they are hazardous, or order landowners to do so.

Who is profiting from this? Who wants an extension that will allow cutting at a landowner’s whim into August? And why the call for earlier upland burning? This week, a wildfire raged in the Kealkil mountains. It’s April, the no-burning season. Linnets, skylarks and stonechats are nesting, and if curlews are nesting in the area, their nests will be burnt too.

How did the fire start? The sun’s rays focused through a bottle?

Who is so insistent that the minister is swayed despite objection from every environmental group and and 26,000 signatures from the public? Who is pulling the strings of this manqué government to legalise this desecration of our land?