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Nature in the News

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  • Moderators, Arts Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 76,207 Mod ✭✭✭✭New Home




  • Registered Users Posts: 2,010 ✭✭✭kildare lad


    deise08 wrote: »

    It's very rarely enforced though . They're needs to be a ban on supertrawlers anyway . A lot of inshore trawling is for spratt that's turned into pellets for salmon farms, depriving all the birds and wildfish of their dinner , so we can eat salmon that's pumped full of antibiotics and colourings .


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    It's very rarely enforced though . They're needs to be a ban on supertrawlers anyway . A lot of inshore trawling is for spratt that's turned into pellets for salmon farms, depriving all the birds and wildfish of their dinner , so we can eat salmon that's pumped full of antibiotics and colourings .

    Can that be done in Irish law or is it a EU matter?


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,010 ✭✭✭kildare lad


    Can that be done in Irish law or is it a EU matter?

    The banning of supertrawlers ?? I'm sure it could but it depends what politicians are getting paid by who. Europe has done extremely well overfishing our waters . We've a government that ****e on about climate change and environmental diversity but it's all lip service. What's being done in our oceans is nothing but pure greed . My uncle said when he was growing up in the 50s , the sea would be black with huge shoals of mackerel a mile or 2 long. Now fxck all getting past all the trawlers . I caught 2 mackerel in about 4 days fishing last year in Clare. Australia banned supertrawlers on its waters

    THE SECOND LARGEST trawler in the world, previously banned from Australian waters, is back off the coast of Ireland – and it has some in the industry concerned.

    The 143 metre long Margiris is currently sailing along the north coast of Mayo, having entered the Irish European Economic Zone on 7 January. It can process as much as 250 tonnes of fish per day.

    The ship has sailed under a range of names, including the Abel Tasman, and various nationalities.

    The vessel is currently being kept under the watchful eye of the Sea-Fisheries Protection Authority, assisted by the Naval Service and Air Corps.

    “A basic principle of the EU Common Fisheries Policy is shared access for all EU vessels to all EU waters,” a spokesperson for the authority explained.

    “As a European registered fishing vessel, the Lithuanian registered vessel the Margiris is permitted to operate in any European waters and can fish in any area and retain on board any fish for which it has a nationally assigned European quota.

    It was the target of an Australian ban on so-called supertrawlers in 2012.

    The ban was extended just before Christmas to smaller ships, The Australian reports.

    Local fishing groups have previously expressed grave concern over ships like Margiris, which has far created capacity than many smaller boats combined, when it arrived off the west coast in March last year, soon after the ship was reportedly again refused entry to Australia


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  • Registered Users Posts: 18,069 ✭✭✭✭fryup


    New Home wrote: »

    there you go now, and all you people slagging off orangemen :cool:


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,630 ✭✭✭marlin vs




  • Registered Users Posts: 9,601 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    marlin vs wrote: »

    Need to see similar for the operators of certain windfarms.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,323 ✭✭✭lolie




  • Registered Users Posts: 2,566 ✭✭✭Yellow_Fern


    Watching Brendan Gleeson burren documentary. Nice show. But is it really true that the Burren is one of the most diverse habitats in the world as they say?


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  • It's a bit of a glib statement alright, measuring biodiversity is a very tricky, subjective and maybe impossible task. By the simplest metric, species number/unit area, then no, neither the Burren, nor any temperate habitat is super diverse.

    The Burren does have a famous flora, and the presence of several suites of species that normally grow in vastly different (ecologically and geographically) habitats is very unusual. Other groups of species vary in abundance and diversity; overall it is fair to say the region has an important natural history; certainly on a European level, but a lot of general statements made on it will not bear close scrutiny.


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,069 ✭✭✭✭fryup


    anyone listening to mooney goes wild last night,

    they were talking about a jackdaw that keeps flinging a piece of timber at some fella's back porch window




  • https://www.rte.ie/news/connacht/2021/0413/1209713-rhododendron-connemara/

    A start at least. Now I don't like to knock any good news story, but the timelines here are at first reading not great. Eradicating Rhodo definitely will not fit into <5 year timescales; it's a medium to long term project. And depends on the will, and money to not run out during the course of this. Such realities don't seem to have hit home with those holding the pursestrings. The outcome of a one-off, not-followed-up clearance is obvious, and has happened in the same place, with the same species before.

    The voluntary group Groundwork did some great work in Killarney. They understood that you must work to the plants timelines, maintaining areas free of seedlings by constant monitoring, while slowly widening the area cleared. Naturally this was kiboshed in favour of contractor led system in place now.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    yeah; half a million quid might pay for two people for five years; or five people for the stated two years. not exactly ambitious.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    front page of the irish times today. red in tooth and claw...

    https://twitter.com/b_fitzsimons/status/1383334336905191429


  • Registered Users Posts: 18,069 ✭✭✭✭fryup


    fryup wrote: »
    anyone listening to mooney goes wild last night,

    they were talking about a jackdaw that keeps flinging a piece of timber at some fella's back porch window

    the video of it is on the website, really bizarre behaviour

    a quarter of the way down https://www.rte.ie/radio1/mooney/#103642595


  • Registered Users Posts: 1,531 ✭✭✭pottokblue


    Looks like a young heron out at UCD. Yesterday I saw Murray and his two buddies all nearby on the canal. One standing on the steps of yellowdoor 35, the other perched in the bush and the third on the chimney of number 45. First time I see the 3amigos on the same stretch of canal. A moorhen had her nest on that stretch and she was sitting in it on top of her two little ones keeping them well protected from hunting herons.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    well, you could blow me down with a feather.

    Bandon fish pass 'not done right and starting to fall apart'
    https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40271000.html


  • Registered Users Posts: 9,601 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    well, you could blow me down with a feather.

    Bandon fish pass 'not done right and starting to fall apart'
    https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/munster/arid-40271000.html

    Sums up the approach of the likes of the OPW and Waterways Ireland to our rivers:(


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    not exactly cheery news coming from the mournes and killarney in the last day or two.

    https://twitter.com/PaschalSheehy/status/1385992849712373761

    https://twitter.com/NaturalistDara/status/1385687733415383041


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  • Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    Heartbreaking re Killarney but thankfully out at last. A heroic work by our Fire eService . A third destroyed. .


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder




  • Registered Users Posts: 7,575 ✭✭✭Mr Crispy


    Heart-breaking.


  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder






  • While it is well known for it's spectacular scenery, the Park is far more important as a repository of really enormous biodiversity. The greatest concentrations of hyperoceanic woodland (temperate rainforest) in the country, with all the mosses, lichens, ferns and liverworts that live in such places.

    A fern new to Europe was found last year; probably the rarest plant in Europe. I don't know if that will have survived. Not to mention old growth Oak/holly forests, Strawberry Tree, rare Whitebeams, Kerry Slugs.

    Some species will bounce back, but this is not chaparral or garrigue, fire is not normal or part of any natural cycle. Fast growing/breeding opportunists will thrive, but re-creating ecosystems will take many decades even centuries, and there are in some cases no obvious sources of recolonising populations.

    Although lots of study has been done there, I would say it's likely there are species we never knew, and never will know were there.


  • Registered Users Posts: 2,818 ✭✭✭Tea drinker


    This upland burning has become an epidemic in recent years. The ah but sure attitude hasn't worked. I can't understand the government attitudes, we can't say anymore we don't know the damage we are doing to nature.
    Even near me in Dublin there were some fields abandoned at the end of celtic tiger, have never seen as many ladybirds just whole fields full of them.
    Have bullfinches and Stonechats... all being rapidly de-homed with building work.
    !Ah but sure we have to keep increasing the population so need houses"


  • Registered Users Posts: 32,634 ✭✭✭✭Graces7


    This upland burning has become an epidemic in recent years. The ah but sure attitude hasn't worked. I can't understand the government attitudes, we can't say anymore we don't know the damage we are doing to nature.
    Even near me in Dublin there were some fields abandoned at the end of celtic tiger, have never seen as many ladybirds just whole fields full of them.
    Have bullfinches and Stonechats... all being rapidly de-homed with building work.
    !Ah but sure we have to keep increasing the population so need houses"

    With no TV or radio I read news on RTE and Breaking News online.

    Statements made and promises an d I Intend to write letters to the high-ups about this. Can we all do this please? Cannot just sit here and see flames.

    They KNOW what farmers do and have done nothing.

    Oh one good thing ; they have added 50 more rangers.


  • Registered Users Posts: 15,630 ✭✭✭✭whisky_galore


    Is there a case to be made for creating fire breaks in national parks?
    This issue isn't going away, and no-one; farmer, camper or vandal is likely ever to be caught and prosecuted.
    It's all well and good to let it grow away until a dry spell and of course the inevitable happens.




  • I think the problem is the intermediate type vegetation, gorse and bracken, and to a lesser extent Purple Moor-grass.

    These first two species are not abundant in any stable natural habitat. The current practices of sheep grazing, which selectively browse other species, leave these. The gorse in particular is seen as a problem and then burnt. This does not of course remove it.

    I think removal of all grazing within the park is necessary straight away. Then payment to allow regeneration to woodland on upland areas nearby. Temperate woodland doesn't burn; isolated trees and interspersed patches of course succumb, but not reasonable stands.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Arts Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 47,988 CMod ✭✭✭✭magicbastarder


    what is the actual productivity of upland farming?
    i've found it hard to actually find out. in one simple metric - how much is the actual produce worth, compared to the subsidies the farmers earn (and which they are protecting by burning land)?


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