Coastwatch Ireland is to take part in a volunteer survey involving 23 countries, including all EU coastal states and Russia, Ukraine, Romania, the Baltic countries and Turkey. Ten thousand sites, including 1,000 in Ireland, will be surveyed using the questionnaire published today in The Irish Times. Volunteers are asked to contact a local co-ordinator, pick an area and survey it at low tide between October 1st and 14th. Schools and community groups in coastal areas may also get involved.
Similar surveys have been carried out in Ireland before, said Ms Karin Dubsky of Coastwatch Ireland. This one will be the most extensive and she believes it can give a clear picture of the entire coast and its environment. "It is like a jigsaw puzzle and the public could play a very important part in filling in the pieces," she said. "We want people to go out and look at their area, to be more observant and to notice things they normally don't see. "For example, there might be electric cables near the shore that they might not have noticed. All this is important. We want people to be more observant about their coast because it is their commonage."
The results of the survey will be used to lobby the Government and local authorities, she said. Since the survey first started 10 years ago "there has been definite change in some areas". Ms Dubsky said that some farmers who have land backing on to the coast are afraid erosion could affect their land and so have begun checking what damage fertilisers could do to the dunes.
Coastwatch Ireland, which is part of a network of European environmental groups, checks if beaches are clean and safe enough to merit "blue flag" status. It also produces books on the environment and on ecological matters and provides free legal and scientific advice to local communities.
She praised the involvement of local authorities that provide coordinators for the survey and recalled that two years ago Cork County Council had its own employees on the coastline filling in the questionnaire.