Trout fishing once flourished on Lough Sheelin. Now pollution and mass fish kills are commonplace Kathy Sheridan on how a once-great angling amenity is being systematically destroyed.
From the first-storey livingroom of the Burke-Kennedys' Cavan home, the view is quintessential John Hinde. A few small boats bob lazily on the shores of the sapphire-blue waters of Lough Sheelin.
Sedge warblers return to the reed beds and blackcaps fly all the way back from South Africa to the same bush they left in the autumn. The heady silence is broken only by birdsong and the rhythm of soft, lapping waters. It is what the French like to think of as l'Irlande sauvage.
It's 40 years since Paul Burke-Kennedy, then an architecture student, designed a fishing lodge for his father here at Mount- nugent, in this still under-appreciated part of Ireland. For Paul, now retired, though still chairman of the architectural firm Burke-Kennedy Doyle, it remains a cherished retreat. But though still a "blow-in", as he puts it, he is close enough "to see a leisure industry dying on its feet".
The wild, brown trout of Sheelin - the envy of purist anglers the world over - are dying. Everyone knows why: too much animal slurry is being spread on unsuitable land at the wrong times. The remedy is clear; it lies with political will and courage. But time is precious and no-one seems to understand the urgency.
On Mr Burke-Kennedy's livingroom wall is a stuffed, framed 7½ lb wild, brown trout caught on Sheelin, a rather magical creature of a kind that once populated the wild trout lakes of Europe, the fantasy fish of purist anglers around the world.
Unlike coarse fish such as roach or pike, wild trout are extremely fussy about their environment. They need unpolluted waters to thrive. Their plentiful presence in a lake not only bears witness to a pure, healthy environment, but to a people that place a value on nature, beauty and tradition, not to mention a tourist industry.
Of just eight wild trout fisheries to survive in Europe, six are in Ireland. Thirty years ago, at the height of the mayfly, Sheelin was an anglers' mecca, host to hundreds of boats, laden with fisher- men from all over the world, angling for trout. In late May, early June, all the guesthouses and the two hotels were filled to capacity. "It was a lake where you could stay out till dark in mayfly time and expect to catch the fish of a lifetime," says Eamon Ross, of the Lough Sheelin Trout Protection Association. "Last Sunday I went out and saw three boats." The number of fishermen has dropped by at least two-thirds. One of the two hotels is now a nursing home.
Tests and figures compiled by the Shannon Regional Fisheries Board tell the story scientifically. When stock surveys first began in 1978, the CPUE (Catch Per Unit of Effort) value recorded for trout was 5.0. As water quality declined, the lush weed beds died off and CPUEs died with them, showing small sporadic recoveries only in a period when slurry transportation subsidies were dangled before farmers. A recent £500,000 investment by the SRFB to enhance the Sheelin stream catchment was hugely successful; it raised juvenile stocks by 300 per cent.
But once these young fish enter the lake - where the zooplankton they survive on has been smothered by unwanted plant and algal growth - tens of thousands are dying within the year. Year after year, Lough Sheelin sees mass fish kills that if taken as a whole, would cause public uproar. According to Eamon Cusack of the SRFB, between 20,000 and 30,000 trout are killed every year by poor water conditions. It is an insidious mass-killing that happens over a period, and therefore lacks the drama to capture public attention.
Sheelin's healthy CPUE of 5.0 in 1978 had fallen to 0.6 by 2002 and is still dropping.
Of the 15 lakes within the Lough Derg and Lough Ree catchment measured for a 1999 report, Sheelin - once Ireland's premier brown trout fishery - came out worst, the only one rated "highly Eutrophic". A map in the same report illustrates the startling concentration of piggeries, almost unique to Sheelin. The report states that farm slurry storage facilities are 20 per cent deficient.
Despite this incontrovertible evidence of cause and effect, farmers in Sheelin's catchment still argue about the precise source of the devastation.
There are 27 massive, intensive pig-rearing units in this one area of Cavan, and the quantities of agricultural sewage produced, says Mr Ross, are comparable to having the population of Sligo sited on the edge of Lough Sheelin. All sources agree that there is probably little or none of the "point source" pollution (effluent deliberately released into waterways) common in the past, but the fact is, all say, that farmers (or "industrialists" as pig-farmers are referred to by other farmers in Cavan) are spreading too much slurry on land that cannot absorb it, at the wrong times of year, i.e. when wet weather simply washes it into the streams and on into the lake.
Apart from the brown trout killings, the consequences for the Sheelin area as a family and tourist amenity are dire. It is not uncommon for families to go down to the lake in summer, take a look at the muggy water quality and go home again.
Only a few weeks ago during the long drought, according to Mr Burke-Kennedy, the lake became grossly discoloured, with water clarity down to less than 12 inches. "It must be polluting the wells and water supply systems. A lot of people are getting their wells tested all the time and many are using bottled water".
There is no shortage of legislation and bye-laws covering such pollution. For example, bye-laws introduced by Cavan County Council in October 2000 require all slurry to be spread before October and each farm to have 24 weeks slurry storage capacity.
There are loopholes enough, however, to cast a question mark over the slurry-spreading that was occurring in the Sheelin area from January last year or in the early months of this year. Though, presumably, there can be no get-out for those reported to have been spraying slurry over ditches from the public road.
The council has gone to the expense of appointing four technicians to implement the bye-laws. The results are awaited with interest. Meanwhile, the EU's stated determination to force the State to restore satisfactory water quality to resources such as Sheelin by the year 2007, gives hope to many. Mr Ross interprets the habitat directive to include wild brown trout. The State, and its farmers, are on notice.
Mr Burke-Kennedy believes that some serious public consciousness-raising is in order. "I think that we're a very immature nation regarding environment matters. We assume everything in Ireland is green, that the streams are crystal clear We're not aware of what's happening to the environment. There's nearly an air of hopelessness among people, a sense that they can't do anything about it. As far as I know, all the piggeries have planning permission, but a fair number were got by 'retention'.
"No consideration was given to how to handle the slurry."
Despite the fall-out for every- one involved, Mr Ross and other local activists are reluctant to pin the blame on farmers alone, taking the view that it's the nature of the land in the area - "it can't take that amount of spreading" - and the enormous amounts of rainfall that work against them. "We are not anti-farmer. We are not saying that we want to close down every piggery. Between us, we need to come to some solution. We need digesters to convert the slurry to methane gas for example or you could bag it for fertiliser in pellet form "
Nonetheless, Mr Ross is a man on a mission. "The LSTPA will not stop and it will not accept anything less than Lough Sheelin should be restored to what it was. We want no fighting or anything like that. But will get it back. We will get it back".