Opinion (Anne Coloon): The good, the bad and the ugly of Ireland’s natural world.

There is little doubt that covering the stories of Ireland’s natural world can be discouraging at times.
When I first started working as a journalist in the early 1990s, I remember covering the first corn rail story. Late in the evening, I accompanied Birdwatch Ireland fieldwork to the Carrows site, where I heard the calls of male corn rails seeking mate during the breeding season.
Standing there in the darkness and beauty on a warm summer night, I fell in love with the setting and atmosphere. The Callows were a special piece of nature found nowhere else in the world. The peaceful atmosphere was wonderful. My inner soul responded strongly to the great soul outside, like two lovers reaching out to each other.
We stood and sat for an hour listening to the “krekkrek” calls of several male corn rails in the tall grass. The field workers returned to their cars, but I stayed where I was, lying on the grass, soaking in the peace and beauty, and eventually fell asleep. When I awoke a short time later, the males had stopped singing and a light drizzle drenched the land. It’s almost time to return home.
I have never forgotten that magical moment when I heard the corn crucian on a warm summer night. It was a special connection between me and my environment that never left me. My guidebook said that the sound of a corn crawfish was not very pleasing to the ear, but rather like the sound of a thumbnail being scraped along the teeth of a plastic comb. This was true. The sound was certainly a far cry from the liquid chirps of blackbirds and warblers. But when you combine it with a warm summer night and a special landscape like the Carrows, it’s definitely magical.
I became interested in this bird and started researching it. In the books I borrowed from the bar library and the newspaper articles I read. I read with sadness about the fact that for decades this bird was present everywhere. About how common it was in many parts of Ireland. It’s part of our fabric and tradition.
Over the next few years, I wrote a number of articles about the Carrows corn rail and how their numbers were dwindling. Local farmers tried everything to perpetuate its existence, but it was ultimately in vain as flooding increased during the summer. The last time a male corn rail was heard singing was in 2014.
Harriers and sandpipers are also depressing stories, both of which I have written about many times over the years. Their stories are similar in that there is a lot of goodwill towards these birds locally, but reversing their decline seems impossible. About 10 years ago, a wildlife officer took me to the hillsides of the Slieve Bloom Mountains and the marshes of West Offaly where hedgehogs live. It was once again a very special moment for me to witness this amazing bird in such an environment. Again, there was a connection between me and them. That, of course, means it’s painful to think of their current endangered status.
Hearing the sound of bubbles in the Shannon Basin is also a precious moment.
These are some of the bad and depressing stories about Ireland’s natural world, but there are also many good ones. Four of these are the return of breeding cranes and woodpeckers to our coasts, the national expansion of buzzards, and the successful reintroduction of Steller’s sea eagles.
Steller’s sea eagle is a wonderful bird that has adapted well to the Lough Derg environment. Buzzard numbers began to spread across Ireland about 20 years ago when the use of certain insecticides was discontinued. Thanks to conservation efforts in the UK, cranes and woodpeckers have migrated west from the UK to Ireland. These conservation efforts have been so successful that the birds are forced to fly west in search of new breeding grounds.
And what about the ugly story? Almost all of these have to do with thoughtless and callous human activity. One example is Sitka spruce, a monocrop in our highlands. Here, vast tracts of land have been stripped of their pleasant broad-leaved forests and replaced with dense, single-species, impenetrable evergreens. The purpose was profit (for LOTR enthusiasts, think of the orcs cutting down the ancient trees of Fangorn Forest to further their evil plans).
The ugliness of Ireland’s landscape is often excused on the grounds of economic necessity, but there is no doubt that this argument is worn out. While it is possible to continue to generate significant income from land, it is possible to approach it in a more cautious manner. The old-fashioned word “husband” comes to mind.