ANOTHER LIFE/Michael Viney: Five young swallows are lined up shoulder to shoulder on the gutter above the front door, a sea breeze ruffling their breast feathers, the sun glinting blue in their wings.
Every minute or two a parent flashes in with a fly for one of the gaping beaks. I worry that Number Three is not getting his share.
This family is not native to our homestead, but part of a general caravanserai of swallows that swirls around the house and garden in September, pausing on passage south to stock up on midges from the swarms among our trees. The flickering merry-go-round of their wings is a notable punctuation of the seasons, marking, as it does, the month when the nation gets its mind into gear again. In the wake of migrating swallows, all manner of indigenous chickens come flapping home to roost.
In my own little world beyond the mountains, I have been comparing the Republic's National Biodiversity Plan and Northern Ireland's Biodiversity Strategy, both much the same species of document, except the first can also be read upside-down in Irish. It was released invisibly by Síle de Valera at the height of the general election campaign, whereas the North's Minister of the Environment, Dermot Nesbitt, launched his strategy this month at a big green gathering and made a strong speech about "reversing decades of biodiversity decline". Both ministers had just about made it to the wire, since Johannesburg marked the decade since the Rio Convention on Biological Diversity was signed by 150 nations. But while Nesbitt's strategy responds with enthusiasm to an open, consultative process, with well-argued publications and species action plans, the Republic's plan has crept to completion with plenty of NGO recrimination.
One purpose of the plan, in keeping with Rio, was to work out a national conservation strategy that would involve all the government departments and agencies with impact on wildlife - not just Dúchas, as the heritage service.
For years there has been an Inter-Departmental Biodiversity Steering Group, and I have had visions of intense consultation between de Valera's ecologists and officials of half-a-dozen key departments.
(Excuse me, there's a peacock butterfly on the teasels, flashing those beautiful eyes at the sun - it's the first I've seen for weeks. Do you suppose the Inter-Departmental Biodiversity Steering Group ever has outings?) I was clearly far ahead of things, anyway. Here are the first "Actions" in the plan:
"1. Relevant Government Departments and State agencies to prepare, with stakeholders, their own Biodiversity Action Plans in line with agreed guidelines to ensure and promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.
2. Improve generation and management of information on biodiversity within Government Departments and agencies.
3. Create biodiversity units or posts within relevant Government Departments and State agencies whose functions will include the preparation of biodiversity action plans within the framework of the National Biodiversity Plan . . ."
"Northern Ireland Departments Working Together" is how Mr Nesbitt's document puts it, with touching simplicity. The key departments of agriculture, forestry and fishing, we are promised, "share DOE's commitment to biodiversity conservation and are determined that environmental improvement will be at the heart of all their policies and actions."
Is it just a question of spin - of eager media relations and persuasive speech and copy writers? When Nesbitt says: "I aim to mobilise support from every quarter, from primary schools through to big business", one at least has the option of believing him (and along with the style comes some substance: an extra £2.5 million a year and another 20-odd staff). One waits to see how Martin Cullen, as Minister of the Environment, will press the need for more money and new department posts.
The North's DOE published its first action plans - for conserving the Irish hare, chough and curlew - two years ago. The plan now before Martin Cullen, with its fetching cover picture of a Scandinavian redwing, makes very little mention of Ireland's actual threatened species. "Specific Species Action Plans," it promises, "will be developed to provide for the conservation of species of highest conservation concern." The trouble is, as the plan confirms, the Republic still has no national database of species, the primary tool of conservation. An early "action" will be to create one.
Meanwhile, "there is a need to establish what work is already being done and by whom, to determine what needs to be done and to prioritise actions and assign responsibilities" - this after years in which Dúchas's own Biological Records Centre was allowed to become little more than a name on a door.
One of the plan's provisions, however, does connect with a more promising reality - "the preparation and adoption of Local Biodiversity Action Plans and the designation of Natural Heritage Officers in all Local Authorities." Here, the passing of the buck has been mercifully - indeed, brilliantly - anticipated by the Heritage Council and the local authorities themselves.
Since the initial collaboration between Sligo, Kerry and Galway Corporations, the programme of local heritage officers has expanded rapidly, so that 20 counties will be covered by the end of the year. The Heritage Council and the local authority employ the heritage officer on a partnership basis, the Council funding a substantial share of the salary, and providing specialist training and professional and technical support.
Ecologists, botanists, archaeologists, and REPS planners have all found a niche as heritage officers, working with local officials, state agencies and voluntary interests. Among the first plans is one for Sligo: a detailed, five-year work programme funded between the county and the Heritage Council.
It is an impressive model, in which wildlife and landscape get their full whack.
Whatever happens to national conservation strategies within Martin Cullen's Environment Department, these local initiatives, and the Heritage Council's role in them, must be left secure. Johannesburg did nothing to improve on the maxim: "Think globally; act locally." It seems, still, to be our best hope.
This has always puzzled me: where did swallows congregate before the invention of telephone wires and TV aerials? I have never seen them perching on any type of tree?
Kirsi Slattery, Arklow, Co Wicklow.
Swallows perched on trees and on the roofs of houses before public services provided them with wires which suit their claw grip and are much better resting and viewing sites.
I was sailing on the Murrough coast off North Wicklow for about two hours on September 15th. The wind was from the north and high pressure, with foggy conditions prevailing. During this time several thousand swallows passed the boat flying low over the sea in a northerly direction, parallel to the coast. They were not feeding but flying in a purposeful way in the wrong direction!
Richard Nairn, The Murrough, Wicklow.
I saw a kingfisher in St Enda's Park, Rathfarnham, during the summer. Then I saw one at the Forty-Foot at the beginning of September. Do they live around the coast?
Paul Carroll, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.
After breeding, kingfishers sometimes move to coastal areas and estuaries to feed.
Edited by Michael Viney, who welcomes observations sent to him at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. E-mail: viney@anu.ie. Observations sent by e-mail should be accompanied by a postal address.