Sir, – The report of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss has been hailed by environmentalists as a ground-breaking document, but it remains to be seen whether it will compel Government action to save what’s left of our ravaged wildlife heritage, or prove to have been the end-product of a well-meaning but ultimately ineffectual talking shop.
Those who put together the report were ordinary people, albeit guided by experts, but the final decisions on their recommendations will be made by politicians, many of whom are beholden to powerful lobby groups and will be mindful of the likely impact their response to the report will have at the ballot box. That’s how politics works, unfortunately.
What that means it that they won’t necessarily do what is required to address biodiversity loss. They may instead do, as they have done consistently down through the decades, what is politically expedient.
For example, the Government still allows birds that are on the endangered species list to be shot at certain times of the year if somebody offers a sufficiently convincing excuse for targeting them.
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Small wonder that an estimated 63 per cent of our bird populations are in decline. Apart from that, I believe we need to take a serious look at the notion of shooting birds for sport.
In driven shoots semi-tame hand-reared pheasants are shot on the ground as they waddle up to their killers, trusting the approaching gunmen even as they riddle them with toxic lead. The magnificent pheasant with its multi-hued plumage is turned into a mangle clump of feathers and bleeding flesh just to satisfy a silly whim.
We allow that, promoting it as legitimate recreation, and then wonder why there’s a lack of respect for wildlife.
Some of the politicians who’ll be mulling over the Biodiversity Loss Report will be the ones who condone or encourage hare coursing and fox hunting. Again, how can those in leadership expect to be taken seriously, or their half-hearted “save our wildlife” message to be acted on, if they see nothing wrong with setting dogs on foxes and hares for a laugh?
Like the birds on the endangered species list, hares are supposedly protected – except when the politicians allow the politically well-connected coursing folk to trap thousands of them every year to be chased and terrorised.
The fox is a veritable symbol of our wildlife heritage. Yet it can be legally hounded to exhaustion and have the skin ripped off its bones.
A government that allows the killing or torment of innocent birds and animals for fun is not likely to care about what happens to anything, or anyone… apart from those they depend on to re-elect them.
So, it’s up to us to make it clear to them that saving the birds and animals is an election issue.
We need to let them know that, as a first tentative move towards safeguarding our wildlife from the cocktail of threats facing it (climate change and habitat loss mainly), we must end the man-made, human-directed scandal of “field sports”. – Yours, etc,
JOHN FITZGERALD,
Callan,
Co Kilkenny.