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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
7 2 September 2016
I
reland’s largely dysfunctional relationship
with its natural environment was neatly
summed up by former Taoiseach, Bertie
Ahern, when he moaned that his ill-fated
Celtic Tiger was being stymied “because of
swans, snails and the occasional person hang-
ing out of a tree”.
While the Ahern era was hardly a high water-
mark of environmental awareness and
ecological literacy, one useful resource to
emerge from this time was Ireland’s National
Biodiversity Data Centre, which was estab-
lished by the Heritage Council in 2007 and is
funded by it and the Department of Arts, Herit-
age and the Gaeltacht.
The Centre was set up to collate, manage,
analyse and distribute data on Ireland’s biodi-
versity. Headed by Dr Liam Lysaght, the Centre
is based in Waterford city. “We are trying to put
in place systems to track changes in the coun-
tryside”, Lysaght told Village in a recent
in-depth interview. “It’s about building the evi-
dence base to support biodiversity policy”.
It is, he adds, “quite remarkable that at the
moment we don’t even know how many species
of organisms we have in Ireland. We know of
31,000 (species) but it’s estimated the total is
closer to 40,000, yet they remain to be discov-
ered, so we’re trying to build knowledge on
what species there are in Ireland, where they
occur and how they are changing over time.
That is absolutely vital to feed into policy
development”.
Biodiversity and nature conservation, he
notes, are seen in Irish public life as a problem
rather than an opportunity. Hence the decision
by Heritage Minister, Heather Humphries, at the
behest of the Irish Farmers Association, earlier
this year to extend the hedge-cutting season.
The ban is vital in protecting habitats during
nesting and breeding season.
Ireland’s hedgerows are among our few
remaining semi-intact areas of biological diver-
sity. This IFA-led and politically sanctioned
incursion underlines the asymmetrical balance
of power between those trying to defend Ire-
land’s imperilled wildlife and the well funded and
politically connected lobby groups seeking to
erode environmental safeguards at every turn.
Lysaght is an advocate for education and
enlightenment rather than conflict. “We have to
counteract this view… people love getting out
into the countryside, they love being out in the
natural environment”.
To coincide with the International Year of Bio-
diversity in 2010, the Centre pioneered an
ongoing initiative called the Bio Blitz. This
brings together groups of people to see how
many species can be identified within a defined
area. While the Bio Blitz is an imported idea, the
particular spin put on it in Ireland results in four
or five teams simultaneously in the field at vari-
ous locations, competing against one another.
“It’s astonishing: everyone is surprised when
you tell them there might be 900 different spe-
cies of moths or 100 species of bees. These
kinds of figures communicate very simply and
effectively”.
A winning Bio Blitz site can expect to record
over 1,000 species in a 24-hour period - an illus-
trative glimpse into the staggering complexity
of the natural world in a country that is in no way
thought of as a biodiversity hotspot.
Lysaght is intrigued by the paradox that while
nature conservation, at least in Ireland, has
negative connotations, on the other hand:
“There’s hardly a person in the country that
isn’t moved by hearing a cuckoo in the wild. If
you talk to those same people about the need
to conserve the countryside, or do something
positive for nature conservation – well, there is
a disconnect there”.
The ongoing ecological catastrophe of bog-
mining is, in Lysaght’s view, “symptomatic as
to how poor our attitudes to nature conserva-
tion are. Frankly, what we are doing to Irish peat
bogs is a scandal, there’s no getting away from
it. And that’s both private individuals and the
State”.
Raised bogs are, he reckons, probably the
rarest habitat that we have in Europe:
“Ireland is fortunate to still have some of
them remaining, but only a very small percent-
age of our raised bogs are still intact, and
frankly I don’t understand why, for the common
good, we don’t just say these, for the common
good, have to be protected. Full stop”.
Documenting
what’s left
We need an independent State
conservation-promotion office
John Gibbons interviews Liam Lysaght, Director
of the National Biodiversity Data Centre
ENVIRONMENT
The National Biodiversity
Data Centre gathers,
computerises and makes
sense of raw data, in an
attempt to understand
the state of Ireland’s
biodiversity
Biodiversity: €26 billion per annum to conservation-adverse politicians
September 2016 7 3
While fair compensation for existing turbary
rights needs to be paid, there is, he says, abso-
lutely no reason, other than politics, that this is
being allowed to continue. Contrast, he says,
projects like the Abbeyleix bog, where the
locals have taken ownership of a raised bog
donated by Bord Na Móna. This is an oasis of
diversity, especially when compared to the
adjacent ‘commercial’ bogs, where, he notes,
“the scale of destruction is just staggering”.
Their dual role as carbon sinks makes this even
more reprehensible, he adds.
Lysaght was unimpressed by Bord Na Móna’s
‘Naturally Driven’ advertising and PR campaign
earlier this year:
“I think it’s disingenuous; what I would say
about Bord Na Móna is there are some very
good staff in the company who are trying to do
a lot in terms of giving back some of the land
that’s been cut away; I’d like to see more of
these sites being given over to biodiversity and
tourism”.
Lysaght finds it ironic that MEP and bog-cut-
ting lobbyist Luke Ming Flanagan is also a big
fan of Dutch liberalism, particularly regarding
cannabis, but seems to have failed to notice
that the same Dutch have spent over €100 mil-
lion on peatland conservation. Amazingly, as
far back as the late 1970s and early 1980s, a
Dutch foundation raised the money to buy three
Irish raised bogs and donated them to the Irish
State for nature conservation.
The crucial role of the National Biodiversity
Data Centre is gathering, computerising and
making sense of reams of raw data, in an
attempt to benchmark the state of Ireland’s bio
-
diversity. Without this, how can we measure
future losses or gains? Examples of this are two
insect-monitoring schemes it operates. These
are spread across more than 120 sites all over
Ireland. “This is the kind of empirical data that
are needed. You can’t – or you shouldn’t be able
to – refute, factual data like these”.
Butterflies are one of the main insect groups
it monitors, as these have been shown to be
among the best species for monitoring the
impacts of climate change:
“My impression is that the abundance, the
biomass of organisms, is declining; probably
since the 1970s they have declined hugely”.
Lysaght fondly recalls childhood walks in
north Kerry through meadows teeming with
wild creatures of every hue:
“We know there has been a phenomenal
decline in the amount of hay meadows in Ire-
land”, he adds. “We’ve gone from fantastically
rich meadow to a sterile desert across the coun-
tryside, frankly”.
An ornithologist by training, he grew up in
Limerick’s inner city. While much of his work as
director of the centre is technocratic by its
nature, he is back in the field at every opportu-
nity. This notably included spending a month
two years ago cycling 3,200km around Ireland’s
coastline, accompanied by his then 18-year old
daughter as he visited dozens of wildlife sites.
“As a State, nature conservation really isn’t on
the radar”, he concludes. “It’s seen in govern-
ment circles as a problem, not as an opportunity”.
He is frustrated at the willingness of government
agencies to borrow the language of conservation
(‘Origin Green’) to use as a greenwashing tool for
international marketing purposes.
At the moment, all that stands between much
of Ireland’s remaining threatened wildlife and
habitats being wiped out by commercial or
agricultural interests are small, poorly funded
groups of volunteer NGOs who, Lysaght says,
are doing their best, but it’s absolutely not
enough:
“We need an independent State body or
office of conservation, primarily tasked not with
enforcement but with going out and touting the
benefits of nature conservation”.
Rural Ireland betrays an uneasy relationship
with the natural environment, and while
acknowledging it, Lysaght is at pains to stress
the success stories, such as the Burren’s farm-
ing for conservation project.
Many individual farmers, he stresses, are
interested in the natural habitats that surround
them. “Once it becomes political, that’s the
problem”, he adds.
“Wouldn’t it be brilliant if every townland in
Ireland had just one acre of non-fertilised
meadow?… That’s something tangible, and
there are a lot of farmers who wouldn’t mind
doing that”. Despite his own efforts at putting
a positive spin on nature conservation, in real-
ity he is profoundly worried: “We’re losing so
much, it’s just slipping away from us as we go
about our business”.
In Ireland, nature conservation, measured in
terms of goods and services, contributes an
estimated €2.6bn per annum to our economy.
This, Lysaght accepts with a shrug, may ulti-
mately be the only metric that might actually
catch the attention of our nature-averse politi-
cians.
John Gibbons blogs at ThinkOrSwim.ie.
A video recording of this full interview is
available there.
“As a State, nature
conservation is seen as a
problem, not an opportunity”.
He is frustrated at the
willingness of government
agencies to ‘greenwash’
LIam Lysaght
