Hillsides Donal Ireland's The Burning Hickey: Havoc Of

Mon, 07 Feb, 2022 - 14:09

Donal Hickey

Smoke is already rising from the hillsides in familiar territory. The annual burning season is well underway, with farmers taking advantage of earlier-than-usual dry conditions in January.

And environmental groups such as the Irish Wildlife Trust are already voicing concerns, with memories of large-scale and out-of-control gorse fires still fresh from last year. It’s against the wildlife laws to burn vegetation between March 1 and August 31. But this regulation is blatantly flouted in many parts of the country where burning continues into April and May, which couldn’t happen at a worse time for ground-nesting birds and other wildlife.

Donal Hickey: 'It would be unfair to blame farmers for all the fires. Some burn in a managed way and claim this benefits the landscape.'

People are getting away with this and, it seems, nobody is ever brought to book. I’ve been reporting on fires in Killarney National Park and other areas for this newspaper since the 1970s and have yet to see an offender prosecuted. The Green-influenced government has, so far, turned down requests from the IFA and other farm organisations for an extension of the deadline that would allow scrub-burning until the end of March.

Given the poor state of upland habitats, smoke emissions, water pollution and greenhouse gases, the Irish Wildlife Trust’s Padraic Fogarty said burning is exactly the wrong thing to do. “While controlled burning is preferable to the out-of-control variety, it is nevertheless extraordinarily harmful to be burning peatlands and represents a failure of land management,” he said.

Recently highlighting the situation in the Wicklow Mountains National Park, he said nature conservation is the primary aim of national parks. So, instead of burning, there ought to work to restore degraded landscapes, and not measures that seem designed primarily for the benefit of sheep grazing, he argued. The lobby for a ban on all land-burning is likely to get stronger, especially with growing awareness of climate change effects. Calls for rewetting peatlands and highland areas will also intensify along with campaigns for more tree-planting and carbon sinks.

It would be unfair to blame farmers for all the fires. Some burn in a managed way and claim this benefits the landscape. A huge fire, which damaged about 3,000 hectares in Killarney National Park last April, did not involve farmers or land clearance, said gardaí.

The fire could have been caused by small campfires or lighted cigarettes, the gardaí surmised. It was probably a human accident, was their conclusion. With an estimated million-plus people accessing the park each year there could be any number of causes including barbecues. And, in the dry, windy conditions of last April, it wouldn’t have taken much to start a fire, accidentally or otherwise and for it to quickly spread uncontrollably.