As sheep leave the hills, what’s to become of Ireland’s uplands?Michael Viney: Ecologists would leave them to nature. Teagasc and the EU prefer farmingSat Apr 22 2017 - 05:00
Stars of the watery underworld in danger from farm pollutionMichael Viney: Rare plants and fauna are a feature of Ireland’s hard-water lakesThu Apr 20 2017 - 16:38
At last, two snowy strangers find the lakes behind the shoreMichael Viney: It’s 20 years exactly since Egretta garzetta began breeding in IrelandThu Apr 20 2017 - 16:36
Why politicians need to try harder to find the words for wildlifeMichael Viney on Pádraic Fogarty’s ‘Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature’Sat Apr 01 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: The runaway seaweed that smothers our polluted baysSea lettuce is a serious problem for tourism, aquaculture and seaside communitiesSat Mar 25 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: Why hedges need seeing from both sidesUnnecessary changes to regulation could only have a negative impact on biodiversitySat Mar 18 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: On my knees again, planting potatoes in the cool, silky soilMost potatoes need up to 15 fungicide treatments. Could mapping their genome end blight?Sat Mar 11 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: The fish disappearing from Irish watersHaving survived in our seas for 420 million years, some species are now critically endangeredSat Mar 04 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: The snail and the jellyfish went to seaEdward Lear couldn’t have dreamt up the ingenuity of the drifting predator ‘Janthina’Sat Feb 25 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: How ancient is the Thallabawn shipwreck?Our columnist has been observing the local wreck for 40 years. Could it really be a medieval relic?Sat Feb 18 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: how trout disappeared from my favourite riverNew research shows sea trout have more lice the closer they swim to salmon farmsSat Feb 11 2017 - 05:00
Michael Viney: the mystery of the Irish ‘Scots’ pineThe theory that this lofty Irish conifer became extinct has now been disprovedSat Feb 04 2017 - 05:00
Another Life: Sex, the city and blackbirds singing in the dead of nightHow urban blackbirds differ from their country cousinsSat Jan 28 2017 - 05:00
Another Life: All creatures great and small, furry or blubberyFrom dormouse to whale, Ireland’s small but unique mammal community is doing wellSat Jan 21 2017 - 05:00
Another Life: Shannon deserves better than gutter treatmentConstructed wetlands promise relief from gathering floods and pollution of our waterwaysSat Jan 14 2017 - 05:00
A furry good history of the wild Irish rabbitAuthor Michael Conry puts pre-myxo rabbit numbers at 40m, with half killed annuallySat Jan 07 2017 - 05:00
Another Life: On having no desire to live for everI would like to hang around to see final episodes of US’s bizarre rush into trumperySat Dec 31 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Books to make a flower lover happyA chronicle of Irish plants prompts reflection on grand floral designs not attemptedSat Dec 17 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: When seabirds go hungry, who is to save their share of fish?BirdWatch Ireland says impact of fisheries on seabirds is thousands killed as bycatchSat Dec 10 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Probing the pedosphere for masters of the underworldNo organism is more important than the ant to the complex ecology of our soilSat Dec 03 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: ‘The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best is now’With the sycamore taking over, it is time to get less random about what trees we plantSat Nov 26 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Tracking the way to Sargasso for Ireland’s silver eelsWe used to think that eels sped to meet up in the Sargasso Sea for a single, springtime orgy, but it seems some are quite happy to take their timeSat Nov 19 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Looking after natural world is ever more complex taskEnvironmental Protection Agency’s latest report makes for a very sobering readSat Nov 12 2016 - 05:00
Conservationists turn gamekeeper to protect lapwing and curlewDecimation of nesting bird populations has prompted measures to protect habitatsSat Nov 05 2016 - 05:00
Mountain falls, mountain rescue: whose risk at the high path to ecstasy?Another Life: The €40,000 judgment for a woman who fell on the Wicklow Way, a strenuous hillwalking route, might trouble anyone with common senseSat Oct 29 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Autumn and the sound of several leaves fallingAutumn in these islands is becoming a blurred and hesitant season, unmarked by anything so distinct as ‘the fall’Sat Oct 22 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Intricate manoeuvres of the man-of-warThe venomous ‘jellyfish’ on European coastlines are not the passive drifters they seemSat Oct 15 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: ‘I’ll kneel down and bite you with my teeth’The prickly problem of thistle removal can result in a sore wrist . . . and much mutteringSat Oct 08 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Was it for this the wild geese spread the grey wing on every tide?‘Anser albifrons flavirostris’, or the ‘bog goose’, long a traditional quarry of Ireland’s rural hunters, is now Europe’s rarest gooseSat Oct 01 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: How a ‘smell’ can transform the seaMaps for seabirds, rain for grass and some shade for Earth: the many gifts of DMSSat Sept 24 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Pennies from heaven and the secret life blowing in the windTheir gossamer allows spiders to go ballooning, sometimes taking off in their millionsSat Sept 17 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Could tourism tame or terrorise the wild Atlantic chough?A reader’s report made me uneasy: choughs are deliciously wilful and wild; shall we see them tamed into pigeons by the Wild Atlantic Way?Sat Sept 10 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: From the smell of hot lead to the groves of virtual realityThe digitisation of human life suggests at least a psychic transformation of the speciesSat Sept 03 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Donald Trump, the wall and the ocean that giveth and taketh awayThe US presidential candidates hopes a €9m wall will save his golf links in Co Clare. But nature might be more powerful than thatSat Aug 27 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: When snails and slugs scrape supper off a fox’s droppingDogs are catching ‘lungworm’ from molluscs infected with the potentially fatal Angiostrongylus vasorum. So many Irish foxes are infected that our pets are at serious riskSat Aug 20 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: The aliens among us – accommodate or eradicate?The unprecedented spread of misplaced plants and animals, transported through global human activity, feeds growing argument among the world’s ecologistsSat Aug 13 2016 - 05:00
When beauty flutters at the kitchen windowA “red list” of Ireland’s threatened moth species finds about 16 per cent of our 500-odd larger moths warranting concern, with seven species in danger of extinctionSat Aug 06 2016 - 05:41
Another Life: Mindful blackbirds and whales like sunburnt humansA preening blackbird, and concern about UV harm to Arctic wildlifeSat Jul 30 2016 - 05:00
Another Life: Short tongues, shallow flowers – insects and umbellifersOne study counted 118 insect species visiting hogweed, some for copulation. Such insect orgies are common to many umbellifersSat Jul 23 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Why killer whales aren’t eating our seals – so far as we knowThe orcas that travel between Scotland and Ireland are fish eaters, even following salmon and mullet up the River Lee into Cork citySat Jul 16 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: The natural science of scatologyExamining the droppings of the pine marten tells us much about the animal’s biology and populationSat Jul 09 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: 1,000 golden saxifrages amid Sruffaunnamuingabatia’s turbinesIt’s hard to see the saxifrage as useful in terms of offering food or medicine. But it’s part of the peatland flora that soaks up carbon and holds back floodsSat Jul 02 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Why trapping a mink could help save curlews and corncrakesHalf a century after the first escapes from fur farms, mink are now seen across IrelandSat Jun 25 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Remembrance of wines pastWhether elderflower, blackcurrant, rhubarb or gooseberry, country wines livened up our social life in our first decades at ThallabawnSat Jun 18 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Refuge and nursery in our undersea meadowsIn times long past, Zostera fringed every sheltered coast on both sides of the North AtlanticSat Jun 11 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: When Dickens and Darwin meet on the Wild Atlantic Way‘Ecological clerk of works’ is an unfamiliar job title. But the clerks look after the discovery points on Fáilte Ireland’s coastal routeSat Jun 04 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Fortunate anthropophilia of the marmalade flyEpisyrphus balteatus is one of many Irish species with bodies striped in black and yellow in hope of protective confusion with the waspsSat May 28 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Could ivy create the perfect storm for Ireland’s ash trees?The debate continues about the pros and cons of our most widespread climbing plantSat May 21 2016 - 01:00
Another Life: Bluebells, boar and brackenThe animals’ rooting can keep both plants in check. But its toxin means that too much bracken on its own may not be good for themSat May 14 2016 - 01:00
