It's true that national parks have no legal backing, that most of them have been terribly mismanaged and underfunded and that none operates under a management plan. Nevertheless, were the government to fulfill its promises in passing a law, providing investment, and detailing its plans, there’s no doubt that our national parks are brimming with potential.

Being state-owned land, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) is in the driving seat in setting the goals, and in this regard the public has every right to expect that the needs of nature will be put first. However, up to now, national parks have mostly been given over to farming interests, with many full of sheep, cattle, ponies, donkeys, and even goats. 

Occasionally, there is good reason for this, like in the Burren, Co Clare, where cattle grazing is proven to maintain the high-value, species-rich grasslands that are of international importance. But this is the exception.

According to the NPWS themselves, it is their policy to “abide by the criteria and standards for national parks as set by the IUCN”. That’s the International Union for the Conservation of Nature which says that national parks should “protect large-scale ecological processes, along with the complement of species and ecosystems characteristic of the area”. To say that national parks in Ireland meet this criterion is a fiction, but what if it were to be standard? That’s where rewilding comes in.

Rewilding

Rewilding is often misunderstood. It is not about erecting a fence around an area and walking away. It is about managing the pressures on an ecosystem in such a way that ultimately the ecosystem would be able to perpetuate itself without management from people.

In Ireland today, we are a long way from that. Invasive species need to be controlled, drains need to be blocked, missing species need to be reintroduced. Chiefly, however, grazing needs to be controlled. Sheep, deer (frequently the non-native Sika variety) and goats are the chief culprits. They prevent the natural regeneration of trees, yes, but not only trees — they prevent the natural regeneration of pretty much any of the native plants that should be growing in these areas. Frequently, the over-grazing is so intense that the victims are not only the plants but the very soil itself, which is left bare and washing down hills where it pollutes the nearest water course. Priority number one has to be drastically reducing grazing pressure.

Rewilding is also misunderstood as being synonymous with the creation of woodland. Lord knows our tiny pockets of native woodland are in desperate need of restoration and expansion, something that is best achieved through rewilding techniques. 

But rewilding is fundamentally about allowing nature to find its own way, and in Ireland that would mean naturally treeless (or at least low tree density) bogs and wetlands. Rewilding would be good, therefore, for species like hen harrier and curlews that are naturally drawn to these open landscapes.

Healthy habitats

It is true that some of our very high-value habitats are products of grazing, particularly the aforementioned grasslands typical of the Burren, but also dry heath, a landscape that is dominated by shrubs, particularly heather. Some of our Special Areas of Conservation have a legal requirement to maintain healthy dry heath habitats and that is best done using traditional breeds of cattle (sheep do not do a good job). Rewilding is not a solution for these habitats.

However, beyond grasslands and dry heath, natural habitats are much better left with minimal, or no grazing whatsoever. This includes blanket bogs, wet heaths and high-altitude heaths that have little resilience to being eaten by farm animals, even at low densities.

Rewilding, therefore, should be the central priority for national parks, even if that means it won’t apply to all areas within them. At sea, the simplest thing is to stop fishing. If, and when, we get legislation for the creation of marine protected areas, a priority must be to stop fishing in our new national park.

People should expect our national parks to be exemplars of management for nature conservation. Meeting climate and biodiversity targets will mean radical changes to how our lands and seas are used; national parks must be the reference points for how that can be done.

It is welcome that the state is back in the land-buying business and it should do more of it. Farmers on the periphery of parks should be targets for rewilding or high nature value schemes, something that would create a multiplier effect, greatly expanding the biodiversity value of landscapes beyond park boundaries themselves. Core areas of parks should be used for reintroductions of species, such as lynx or even, one day, wolves.

National parks are not just our heritage, they are the gift we are giving to future generations. We owe it to them show ambition in the face of crisis. If we can’t show this in our national parks where can we show it?