The Burren is one of the great natural wonders of this country, isn't it? How then is it that we are possibly facing legal action in the European Court of Justice arising out of the destruction of 256 hectares of its limestone paving and alpine vegetation over the last two years? And these are not the only charges being made against us.
There is one, for example, about a government grant aid for an 80 hectare forestry project on the Pettigo plateau in Donegal, a designated Special Protection Area. And the European Commission is considering action against Ireland over the Department of Agriculture's alleged failure to monitor the damage done by sheep over-grazing. And that's not something which they could claim to have overlooked. Fisheries' interests and your ordinary rod-men have been publicising this for years.
There is a nice point of law or administration here: all EU funded grants, including payments to sheep farmers, are paid on the basis that no other EU law is contravened and no environmental damage is done. It is apparently charged that the Department has failed to police this. It sounds daft: the Rural Environment Protection Scheme sought to reduce stocking, other schemes offered incentives to increase stocking. There is more: our Government signed the Habitats Directive in June 1992, says the article in Wings, quarterly magazine of Birdwatch Ireland, from which all this is taken, but has failed to transpose it into Irish law and to introduce regulations to protect such features as bogs, turloughs, sand dunes systems and other sensitive habitats.
The delay, says the article, is due to lobbying by farm groups. A spokesman for the Irish Farmers' Association is quoted as saying that while they recognise the importance of Special Areas of Conservation, their preservation must not be at the expense of farmers and farming. Much more in this report by John Murphy and Coilin Mac Lochlainn.
A fine article by Michael Viney on how he discovered the joys of birding, a review of his book A Year's Turning and many, many more items of interest, including excellent photographs by Richard T. Mills.
PS. the Editor's Letter gives some hope that increased allocations of money this year will remedy some of the above shortcomings.