Donal Hickey: More wildflowers please!
Roadsides Back? Roundabouts How Hacked The Have And Wildlife Lush Your Are Been Or They In Are With Area? They
It seems the importance of road verges for wild flowers and plants is being more widely accepted with each passing year. As wildflower meadows have largely disappeared, luxuriant growth on roadsides could act as a replacement.
Local authorities appear to be more inclined to let vegetation grow on road verges, balancing safety issues with the need to let nature and wildlife flourish.
The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) has a new project, titled Networks for Nature, which aims to educate and empower local communities and tidy towns groups to manage our 98,000kilometres of road and adjacent verges.
IWT conservation officer Sean Meehan says they offer a ‘’significant area of potential habitat on a national scale for our flora and fauna.” Hedges and verges give sanctuary to a vast array of wildlife. Allowing roadside verges to grow wild could help halt the decline of essential pollinators, such as bees.
Buttercups, primroses and daisies abound, but the purple, elegant foxglove does not appear to be as plentiful as it once was. Bees love foxgloves which are associated with the fairies in folklore.
Poor management of these verges through insensitive and badly-timed mechanical cutting — often in contravention of the Wildlife Acts that ban hedgerow and vegetation cutting March 1 and August 31 — litter, and the use of herbicides are the greatest threats to these habitats.
Roadside hedges are the responsibility of landowners while verges must be maintained by local authorities. Travelling around this summer, it is evident some verges are being allowed grow and others are being cut back.
For instance, there’s a refreshing lushness about vegetation along parts of the Killarney/Mallow road like, for instance, for a few kilometres on either side of the landmark Sandpit House pub.
There’s even a resonance of rural France at the new Ballymaquirke roundabout, County Cork, where roads branch off for Kanturk and Banteer, with vivid red poppies growing there in profusion. Also, wild flowers are clearly being allowed grow on roads leading into Bandon.
However, margins have been cut back on the busy road between Midleton and Youghal, in east Cork.
Issues around timing and the appropriateness of hedge and verge-cutting have become divisive.
But, IWT chairperson Dr Daniel Buckley said, in the latest project, they want to work with councils and local communities on practical management regimes that enable the protection of biodiversity, while protecting human lives on roads.
The project is initially being piloted in South County Dublin, with basic flora and fauna identification skills being used by groups to survey roadside verges in their localities. It is hoped to roll out the project nationally in the coming years.