Members of the Citizens’ Assembly on Biodiversity Loss have conducted the first field trip of its kind, visiting sites in north County Dublin, Dublin Port and Bull Island, to assist in their deliberations.
At each location, they heard about pressures on animal and plant species and remedial measures taken both to mitigate loss and reverse decline. Hitherto, the Assembly, like all others, has met indoors and heard submissions from relevant experts.
The Assembly, which is to report to the Oireachtas in December with recommendations on halting and reversing biodiversity loss, will meet again in September. About two thirds of the 100 member Assembly took part in the field trip, described by the Assembly chairwoman, Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin, as a great success.
“I’m feeling quite overwhelmed by all the information,” she said as assembly members ended the field trip in Malahide, Co Dublin. She said members of the Assembly, who were chosen at random from the general population, seemed to find the experience stimulating.
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“I feel like it’s got the creative juice going. Everyone was very engaged and there’s a sense they’re doing this on behalf of the country,” she said.
The field trip visited the Turvey Nature Reserve, near Donabate in Fingal, where they heard Fingal Council biodiversity officer Hans Visser describe how a large swathe of what used to be farmland around the Rogerstown estuary had been rewilded, in part by decommissioning man-made drains used to dry out the land.
The result today is an estuary area and salt marsh teeming with wildlife, including birds and plants, and left largely to the wiles of nature.
At Dublin Port, chief executive Eamonn O’Reilly, and Eamon McElroy, an engineer who is increasingly involved in environmental projects at the port, described creating nesting pontoons for terns and how in general, environmental considerations now inform all major decisions about the Port.
The chief executive, who is retiring in August, gave the Assembly members a tour of some of the network of cycle and walkways being built inside the Port, in the hope of encouraging both visitors to the Port and cycling tourists from the UK to begin their cycling holiday immediately upon disembarking.
Mr O’Reilly said that getting buy-in for environmental projects, both by enterprises and the public, involved “measuring, informing and educating”. The Port is involved in a long-term partnership with BirdWatch Ireland and has several operations to monitor land and water-based animals.
Mr O’Reilly said that the late Independent TD Sean Loftus, who in the 1970s formally changed his name to Sean Dublin Bay Loftus to campaign against port expansion plans, had been “entirely correct” from an environmental point of view. In answer to a question from an Assembly member, he said it would make no sense environmentally to relocate the Port, as had been suggested from time to time.
At Bull Island, a sand spit parallel to the mainland shore that emerged in the early to mid-19th century after the North Wall prevented tides moving silt further down the coast, National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) staff explained how sand dunes were created and replenished, and the wildlife that flourished in them.
Dr Rebecca Jeffrey, of the NPWS Science and Biodiversity Unit, recalled work her father did surveying the island’s wildlife in 1977, recording 70 to 80 hares. When she did her own academic research in 1991, there were just 20.
“And now there’s none,” she said, reminding the Assembly’s members that species can, and do, disappear.
Aoife Delaney explained that Ireland as a whole has some 1,000 species of plants and that on the Bull Island, there were 350 species - a very high number when considering the size of the Bull.
Ms Delaney explained how the island’s dunes were a first line of defence against rising seas for much of Clontarf. “What Bull Island has done is protect us for a long time ,” she said.
Les Moore, Head of Parks, Biodiversity and Landscape Services, Dublin City Council, said part of the success of the island was that every six to eight weeks, stakeholders, which included the relevant State agencies and the local authority, recreational users of the island and residents met and discussed anything of concern.
“It’s a really big challenge bringing people with you,” Ms Delaney told Assembly members, adding that it was crucial to success.
