Pristine landscapes can be dull landscapes

Our fear of rural development may be misplaced since human influence brings places to life, writes John G. O'Dwyer

Our fear of rural development may be misplaced since human influence brings places to life, writes John G. O'Dwyer

What have Dún Aengus, Skellig Michael and Grianán an Aileach got in common? Easy! Major visitor attractions and core tourism assets. Yes, but perhaps there's something else.

If anybody suggested building these structures today, referring to the consequences as World War Three would perhaps be no overstatement. There would be self-righteous indignation all round, questions in the Dáil and calls for the instant scrapping of plans for such intrusive monstrosities.

Would Ireland be better off, then, if some pre-historic Brehon law had nipped these developments in the bud? We all now agree that it wouldn't.

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Yet these days we affect a rather more lofty attitude towards such multi-purpose uses of the environment. Scenic sites are the polar opposite of our contemporary, crowded urban environments, and it is easy to conclude that balance within society demands that they are maintained as aesthetically agreeable recreational refuges.

Now Jim Connolly of the Irish Rural Dwellers Association is quoted as suggesting that visitors who seek pristine wilderness should, instead of holidaying in Ireland, go to Scotland, where single-built rural houses are not allowed.

Mr Connolly is correct. Visitors coming to Ireland expecting a last outpost of primitive European wilderness will be disappointed. Landscape unaltered by human intervention exists nowhere on this island. Every aspect of our landscape is shaped by human exploitation.

In Scotland the situation is different. The National Trust of Scotland has a policy of maintaining all its Highland areas in their primitive, pre-human condition and, as far as possible, disallowing all but recreational use.

This policy has historic origins. Early in the second last century, the Scottish Highland Clearances forcibly removed the population, creating a land of bare mountains and enormous estates where stag-hunting for the mega-rich is now the major revenue.

The primitive and pristine Highlands have, as a consequence, an undoubted aesthetic appeal.

Nevertheless, on my regular visits to Scotland I have found that things become a trifle monotonous by the seventh magnificently grand but otherwise depopulated valley.

Would our countryside be in some way better if it had somehow been preserved, Scottish style, in its pristine primitiveness? Probably not. An ancient church tells us a story of past human aspiration; a deserted farmhouse tells a similar tale. The megalithic tombs, the bridle paths, the dry stonewalls and the deserted villages are not incongruous intrusions, but monuments to how we have used the landscape.

Indeed, for most of us who regularly take groups to scenic areas, it is quickly apparent that it is evidence of human influence which most intrigues and animates our companions.

Glenary in the Comeraghs is one of my favourites, not because it is wild and unvisited but because it was much visited and part tamed by human habitation with the fascinating evidence still all around.

But the question must arise as to why we should bother with planning policies if the incongruous developments of today will mature with time into symbolic swans, providing future fascination for visiting hordes.

The answer lies, perhaps, with degree. Past human influence altered but did not threaten the delicate natural ecosystem. Our forefathers struggled heroically to tame our landscape, and what little they achieved was hard won. With much less effort today, we have the power to irreversibly alter the balance of nature.

There is no doubt that we have been guilty on this count, with many insensitive, single-built houses blighting our landscape. We all know the experience of rounding a corner somewhere in rural Ireland and gasping in abhorrence at a development that breaks the skyline, obstructs a coastal view or takes the form of a seemingly endless roadside ribbon.

This need not be the case. With sensitive but rigorous planning, houses can be positioned to harmonise with the terrain and enhance the existing landscape.

The viability of rural areas and the needs of our tourism industry require not a ban on isolated homes but a reduction in the number of such developments to the level required to maintain the existing population.

There is no reason why new, outlying homes for those whose families have traditionally lived in rural communities should not, as is now being proposed, be sensitively incorporated into the traditional Irish landscape of mature trees, stonewalls, hedges and fields.

While a balance must be maintained between scenery and development (nobody is suggesting, one hopes, further building on the Ring of Kerry), sensitively constructed one-off houses away from the prime scenic honey-pots can do little to harm the tourism industry.

And it would seem that not as many tourists are seeking pristine landscapes as might be imagined. Scotland, despite its dwellings-free landscape, has hardly prospered as an international tourism destination. In 2002, 1.58 million visitors to Scotland from abroad spent £806 million (€1.2 billion), while the same figure for the Irish Republic was 5.92 million overseas visitors with total foreign exchange earnings close to €4 billion.

The reason for such a variation is, perhaps, to be found within surveys of visitors to Ireland. These consistently show our strongest selling point is not our scenery but the friendliness of the people. And peopled localities are the prerequisite for such visitor interactions.

Our countryside would be truly desolate if heavy-handed planning restrictions now cause communities to decay, inevitably removing much of the agriculture and tourism industries and leaving a depopulated landscape of extensive Scottish style estates.

The age-old link between human activity and landscape will have been severed, and an important part of our heritage will have been lost.