A 1945 Act to reclaim farmland from river floodplains has put many Irish towns and villages under threat of flooding, an Oireachtas committee report on biodiversity has disclosed.
The report by the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, published on Thursday, has said that the expansion of the economy, of farming, and of fishing has had a significant impact on biodiversity in Ireland, with many habitats under severe threat, and with the numbers of many species of wildlife alarmingly depleted.
The report sets out 75 recommendations for action and for reform to help reverse the erosion of biodiversity. There is also particular concern about the deterioration of the marine habitat around the Irish coast.
“The report recommends the prioritisation of the designation of Marine Protected Areas [MPAs],” said chairman Brian Leddin in his introduction.
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From the middle of the last century, peatlands and peat soils were drained for agricultural purposes, with a detrimental impact on the natural habitat. The committee noted that while the policy has now changed to protecting biodiversity, much of the current practice, policies and legislation run contrary to that aim.
“Stakeholders pointed to one example of this with the Arterial Drainage Act 1945 which was enacted to ‘reclaim farmland from river floodplains, and that function of the Act has not changed since’,” said the report.
“The Act has resulted in thousands of kilometres of rivers being altered and having their trees and vegetation removed, very often simply to maintain farmland.
“As a result, flooding in towns and villages is a big issue and the landscape is not diverse enough to adapt to extreme weather.”
The committee pointed to intensive farming as one of the factors responsible for loss of biodiversity, along with afforestation which focused on monoculture planting.
One witness told the committee that having once been 80 per cent deciduous oak woodland, “our native forests have been reduced to no more than 2 per cent of our land area”.
The report also noted a dramatic reduction in living bogs.
“Bogs have been remorselessly exploited so that today less than 1 per cent of midlands bogs are still growing, while across the uplands and West of Ireland, less than one third of these peatlands remain ‘suitable for conservation’.”
The committee noted that 63 per cent of Irish bird species are on a list of concern, with 37 per cent on the amber list and 26 per cent on the red list. The main groups of birds affected are those of wetlands and peatlands, farmland and marine environments.
The committee also reported that around two-thirds of the marine environment has been altered by human action.
“Overfishing has played a big role in the decline of species within the marine environment, including iconic seabirds such as puffins,” it said.
The committee noted that bottom trawling was prohibited in only three out of 90 marine special areas of conservation despite being described as “one of the most damaging activities in our marine environment” by one witness.
