Springtime brings a welcome opportunity for us to take pleasure in our countryside at a moment of almost magical transformation. The spontaneous joy that many of us feel at green leaves on a branch that was bare yesterday, at thrushes and blackbirds suddenly pouring out their liquid songs, at lambs playing or a first swallow: these things remind us that we are ourselves part of nature and its cycles.
The Covid lockdowns, and the shift to staycations, made many more aware of this connection, as has the increasingly compelling evidence that direct contact with nature benefits our physical and mental health. This led to a rapid increase in urban dwellers walking in the countryside. This is welcome, but is putting the very landscapes we enjoy, and the people who live in them, under growing pressure. More intrusive activities, like quad biking, drone flying and uncontrolled dog walking are even more problematic.
This pressure is exacerbated by a loss of cultural memory. Most people were once familiar with farm etiquette from holiday visits “home”. We knew that you always close a gate you had found closed, that you don’t light fires in dry spells, that you keep dogs leashed anywhere there may be livestock. Not anymore.
The gravity of the problem with unleashed dogs has been highlighted by two recent decisions. The first is the closure of the beloved “zig-zags” trail by Wicklow farmer Pat Dunne, whose generous co-operation with hill walkers on his land, provided they did not bring dogs, is exemplary. But he was often abused by dog owners and, finally and shockingly, allegedly assaulted by a man who insisted on bringing his dogs up the mountain in lambing season.
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The other is Dublin County Council’s designation of a no-go area for unleashed dogs to protect ground-nesting birds in the sand dunes on the North Bull Island in Dublin. Whether this will be widely observed is unfortunately doubtful. We need to find imaginative and effective ways to disseminate a clear code for walking in nature, and to ensure that those who violate it are sanctioned.