Damien Enright: Why doesn’t the OPW do more to protect hedgerows

By Damien Enright

THOSE who try to stay healthy in Ireland generally spend time out of doors, walking, swimming, gardening or browsing over nature’s smaller or larger miracles.

It is therefore unusual for those who want to stay healthy to be fleeing indoors. But with successive days, running to successive weeks, of searing sunshine, outdoors, uncovered, isn’t an option. The other evening, here by the sea in West Cork, it was warmer at 9.30pm that it had been all day — why, I know not — and even as a veteran of Mediterranean and tropical climes, I knew the only sensible option was deep shade.

How friendly are trees, I reflected. Our beeches let not a shard of light through their dark green, billion-leaved canopy. They’re mighty useful in summer downpours too; not a drop penetrates the giant umbrella. But we haven’t seen a downpour for some time.

Neither have we yet seen any coloured butterflies this year, apart from whites and speckled woods (relatively scarce ) with their milk-chocolate coloured wings, spotted with rich cream. I see that in other years we already had small tortoiseshells, a few red admirals, some meadow browns flying by the end of June and, in 2009, the phenomenon of tens of thousands of painted ladys making landfall in Ireland on May 31 and June 1, having flown over the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and Spain, France and Biscay to here.

I’m sorry to see that long stretches of the roadside ditches from a half mile beyond Timoleague to the heights of Scardoon have been scalped to suburban lawn height, with a only a few clipped trees left standing. It cannot be argued that 50% of the cutting is done for road safety. Last week, friends saw a new bout of trimming going on, questionably illegal. Its legality is questionable.

Section 40 of the Wildlife Act 1976, as amended by Section 46 of the Wildlife (Amendment) Act 2000, restricts the cutting, grubbing, burning or destruction by other means of vegetation growing on uncultivated land or in hedges or ditches during the nesting and breeding season for birds and wildlife, from March 1 to 31 August.

Yet, there was yer man, at 7am on Saturday, June 23, “tidying up”, giving a close haircut, short back and sides, to a hedge on a long, absolutely straight stretch of road. “Road safety”, he’d probably argue. Straight acres of hedges of that road have needlessly suffered this fate for years. Why doesn’t the OPW do something? Their site says, “Assistance of the public is sought in bringing to attention any alleged unlawful cutting, by reporting details to the Gardaí or local Conservation Rangers of the National Parks and Wildlife Service.”

While some of our rural folk don’t see or don’t want to see that what they kill in nature is part of a larger, international annihilation of the systems essential to keeping the body of the earth alive, others are acutely aware of the endgame and dedicate their time to protecting the areas around them.

This week, I received emails from two groups aware that all flora and fauna of land and sea is on the decline, and we are now in the last years where something may yet be done to keep this Earth that time and miracles have made a sustaining place for our bodies, our souls, and future.

An initiative at Castlefreke, near Rathbarry in West Cork, saved the woods there from being sold by Coillte to Stephen Evans Freke, becoming private and inaccessible to walkers, and unprotected from private whim.

In a subsequent meeting on June 19, Yorick Evans Freke attended and apologised for his family not having consulted the local community about his father’s intentions.

He said he favoured public ownership and committed his family to working with the community to protect the woods into the future. The committee’s secretary is Dominic Carroll.

Meanwhile, on lovely Heir Island, Christine Thery, a painter who’s lived there for years and elegantly illustrated a 2005 walk book of mine entitled Walks of Seven West Cork Islands, emailed me to say that “A small group, three of us, have started the Heir Island Wildlife Project to try to stop the mad, needless and mindless strimming and mowing of the roadsides, in an attempt to ‘tidy’ the island, while plastic accumulates on beaches.”

She has invited me to come and see the damage. Readers who Google Heir Island will see what a lovely retreat it would be for a summer Sunday in this weather.

And when they come home they can say they’ve been to Paris, for the island has a hamlet of that name.