ANOTHER LIFE: Just weeks before her ministry flew off in all directions, Síle de Valera TD presented the National Library with a bundle of James Joyce manuscript that had cost €12.6 million to acquire.
In the dream world of Joycean academia, it was a coup on a par with the contents of Beethoven's waste-paper basket. It also nourished de Valera's delight in particular notions of "heritage". I could never imagine such radiant announcement of the same millions spent on, say, acquiring the Old Head of Kinsale, or on land for a new national wildwood. Nature conservation, while a big part of her department's brief, was never really her thing.
What is it about Fianna Fáil, indeed, that makes it so hard to visualise the words "flower", "bird", "tree", "moth" being uttered in Cabinet with anything but sheepish necessity? Even outside, looking after our natural heritage ought to merit at least public lip service; it is as worthy of commitment as health or education. But fear of the farmers runs deep in Irish politics, and thus it is much safer to blame everything on the EU's mad obsessions with habitats and species. Even the Greens are glad to fight elections on waste disposal issues, not wildlife.
But in Bertie's scattering of the Department of Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands (farewell at last!), expediency has actually matched up with common sense. For more than 30 years, nature conservation has been batted about between ministers and civil service fiefdoms. At last it is to nest where it logically belongs, in the Department of the Environment.
Some overlap between de Valera's department and Environment had long been obvious. And the Environment Protection Agency, the independent body sponsored by the DoE, has been showing a lively - even upstaging - concern for the health of Ireland's habitats and species. It is now, for example, funding a big new research project on the impact of farming practices on biodiversity of wildlife and plants. Dúchas's own research arm, still waiting on new specialist staff, would have welcomed such a significant assignment.
Biodiversity will be a big word in Martin Cullen's vocabulary. The new environment minister inherits publication of the long-delayed National Biodiversity Plan. This reaches into the territories and policies of several Cabinet colleagues. If he sees it as his job to stand up to them, there's some hope he could also lead Dúchas into a tougher, more alert execution of its brief.
He also takes into his ambit the Heritage Council, whose independent conscience has been admirable and effective. Promoting heritage officers for county councils and producing county heritage plans have given a local reality to the care of nature. The Heritage Council is also commited to a proper National Biological Records Centre, the basic data-bank of conservation that, unaccountably, was allowed to become little more than a name on a Dúchas door.
Just as Dúchas is passed to a new boss, another upheaval has sent it back to its map of proposed "SACs" - the special areas of conservation that have proved so politically sensitive in the small-farm west of Ireland in particular.
At an EU seminar in the Hague, our five conservation NGOs - the Irish Peatland Conservation Council (IPCC), An Taisce, Coastwatch Ireland, the Irish Wildlife Trust and BirdWatch Ireland - won a good part of their case for their long, supplementary "shadow list" of SACs. This exercise was part-funded by the Heritage Council.
The NGOs' case was put to the final Atlantic Biogeographical Seminar by Dr Peter Foss of the IPCC. He won a ruling of insufficient sites in 13 kinds of threatened habitat, among them raised bogs, fens, lakes and orchid-rich grasslands. He also secured the NGOs' right to argue the scientific case with Dúchas for sites in another 14 habitats, such as limestone pavement, hay meadows, heaths and bog woodlands.
This was a substantial vindication of the NGOs' long and sometimes bitter campaign to have their shadow list taken seriously. In its time, the campaign had prompted Dr Alan Craig, director of national parks and wildlife in Dúchas, to deplore "a widespread breakdown of trust" and to regret that the European Commission "appears to encourage non-governmental organisations to exercise a policing role over the performance of government bodies, rather than co-operating with them".
Following the Hague rulings, An Taisce's natural environment officer, Shirley Clerkin, said the NGOs looked forward "to addressing the issues with Dúchas under the welcome new stewardship of the Department of the Environment" - this time, presumably, with a bit more respect for the capacities of the voluntary conservation sector.
The Hague seminar was the last in the process of vetting national lists of sites for Europe's conservation network. Dúchas's delegation was quite pleased with how its work fared, compared with that of other EU countries.
The end of the SAC saga is in sight - but it is to be succeeded by designation of Ireland's own Natural Heritage Areas, which impose controls on development. Dúchas must wonder how its role in planning controls will take shape under a minister who runs the planning machinery.
In theory, Martin Cullen's Waterford background should free him from many of the pressures that affected Síle de Valera and Eamon Ó Cuiv, both western TDs with small-farm constituencies rich in conservation habitats.
But now Ó Cuiv will bring his rural and political concerns direct to the Cabinet table, among them the wide resentment of conservation measures. Sitting at the same table, Cullen may have to decide just how much he cares about nature.
The e-mail address of Kieran Buckley, the UCC stoat researcher, appeared incorrectly last week. It is peridix@hotmail.com
On June 1st, on an outing to Ballinafagh Lake, Co Kildare, I saw a narrowbordered bee hawkmoth. It was large,bee-like, with transparent wings held moth-like when resting, and did not have a maroon band on its body as the broad-bordered bee hawkmoth has. What is its present status and distribution in Ireland?
Eddie Gilligan, Leixlip, Co Kildare
The narrow-bordered bee hawkmoth is found throughout these islands where its larval foodplant, devil's bit scabious, is found. But it is very local and on the whole uncommon. It flies from mid-May to mid-June.
I found a dead animal on the side of the road near Carron in Co Clare. It was about 20 centimetres long and 1-2 centimetres thick. It had scaly, silvery skin and was not segmented. Was this one of the New Zealand worms that I read about or was it some form of grass snake?
May Walsh, Carron, Co Clare.
It was a young slow worm, a legless lizard which was introduced to the Burren some 30 years ago and which has now spread in several locations. It lives on invertebrates and is harmless to humans.
I saw an insect in my garden, orange-ish in colour, about the size of a thumbnail, with stubby, constantly quickly beating wings. It was flying very fast from flower to flower, and hovering very briefly at each one.
P. H., Clogheen, Cork
It was a hummingbird hawkmoth.
Edited by Michael Viney, Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. E-mail: viney@anu.ie