From top: Killarney National Park on April 26; Dan Boyle
It has been pitiful this week to watch fires raging at Killarney National Park, across Slieve Donard, and in several other locations.
Even more pitiful has been the howls of outrage that have accompanied these events. That these fires are happening isn’t a surprise. They are occurring every year with astonishing consistency.
The why and the likely who are behind these fires is also well known. They aren’t being caused by members of the Irish Society for Mountain Barbecues. Nor are they being caused by fans of that illusive punk group, Disaffected Youth.
These fires are being started overwhelmingly by land owners who see these natural habitats as a massive inconvenience against their commercial enterprises.
The system, as it exists, not only fails to prosecute those who engage in what on paper is an illegal activity, it financially rewards those who help bring about this ecological damage.
Agricultural payments get made on the percentage of a farm’s land area that is deemed productive. Lands covered in gorse have plants growing that aren’t given an economic value. They consume space that could be more valuable if used for grazing animals. In the perverse logic of agri economics burning this land gives it a greater value.
Outside of the willingness to prosecute has been the capacity to do so. One of the less acknowledged provisions of the current programme for government was the commitment to review the operations of the National Parks and Wildlife Service. This is currently underway. The hope is that we can a wildlife and nature agency that has greater sense of purpose and a stronger ability to achieve.
As a response to this week’s necklace of fires Minister for State with responsibility for Heritage, Malcolm Noonan, has promised to vastly increase the number of NPWS rangers, quickening any training to allow for earliest deployment.
More bodies on the ground can only be a good thing. More powers would be better. Having a legislatively weak NPWS has helped create a culture of impotence that has to be stemmed.
Environmental law breaking in Ireland, in being seen as serious and in being prosecuted, is treated as seriously as white collar is, which of course is not very seriously at all.
To stop the horrendous practice of gorse fires we should develop a turp(entine) walk. Identifiable perpetrators being dealt with by the judicial process in the most public way possible. Shame should inspire an end to the practice.
While farmers are most responsible for these files, they are not representative of all or even most farmers. There are encouraging signs that farmers organisations are acknowledging that this fire setting is a problem and needs to be called out.
Until we can to get to a place where anti-environment is seen as anti-social there will always be those whose self interest will always be valued more than the common good.
The challenge is of how to stop the burning desire of those ingrates from being a desire to burn.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD and Senator and serves as a Green Party councillor on Cork City Council. His column appears here every Thursday. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
Pic via Patrick O’Connor
Why are we subsidising people to produce food that can’t be sold in the first place?
We need someone to go on strike, sit alone with a placard outside the IFA and ignite a movement.
Dan?
Very sad to hear about this. Killarney park is so beautiful!
*was
Most farmers appalled too. Sad to see
Most are trying to make excuses and blaming everyone else from what I have seen and heard
It is more useful to focus on the increase in flammability caused by anthropogenic warming than on the increase in culpability caused by the greed is good philosophy so deeply embedded in the neo-liberal paradigm. Academies of Terror all over the world are reconsidering their courses in weaponizing aircraft, smuggling explosives, weapons training and general malarkeying in favour of a five minute crash course in using a box of matches. The Murdock press in Australia gave up blaming greens and Antifa for causing devastating fires when it was pointed out that this was giving ideas to the real baddies. There really is no excuse right now for our not engaging with the science and philosophy of near-term extinction. Such an engagement might allow us to surrender the biotic world with a little grace and dignity rather than end our days running around screaming like hypnotized chickens.
Fancy a pint when the pubs open?
There are many advantages to near-term extinction. Quite selfishly perhaps, I enjoy how it has allowed me to exchange an utter contempt for humanity for a mildly amused, indifferent contempt. However, a free pint might just persuade me to park my contempt, briefly.
Or we could, like, NOT ‘surrender the biotic world’ at all. That would be even more graceful and dignified!
What a brave little soldier you are! Yourself alone off to undo the industrial frenzy of eight billion demented simians. Here is a list of things to do which you can pin to the lapel of your second best tweed jacket but be quick. Solve climate change, bio-diversity loss, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, atmospheric aerosol pollution, freshwater depletion, biogeochemical flows, land system change and release of novel chemicals. When you’re done, maybe you could clean my gutters?
You sir are a quality commenter. I hope you are here to stay
He plucks a mean banjo as well
It’s probably just Charger.
Too civilized.
Never liked Killarney anyway
‘This petition calls on all TDs to raise this concern as a matter of urgency and to start the work to find effective solutions to ensure our hills do not burn to ash!’
https://www.change.org/p/the-irish-government-stop-burning-our-nature?utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=custom_url&recruited_by_id=6c940cb0-a50a-11eb-a82f-9b9b07e973fc