Sir, - The Glen of the Downs is an unfailingly impressive landscape feature. It is also the site of an ancient native woodland, clearly recognisable from the earliest maps (the Down Survey of the 1650s), and with centuries-old trees, some of them still showing the marks of traditional coppice management. This wood is a rare survival, and has been justly selected as an emblem of Co Wicklow, a Special Area of Conservation and our first National Nature Reserve.
Sadly, the glen has acquired additional importance as a symbol of all the wild places that are under threat. In Ireland today, environmental degradation is pervasive and accelerating: it includes pollution of rivers and lakes, over-grazing, turf-cutting and drainage around supposedly conserved peatlands, invasion by noxious introduced species and all kinds of inappropriately-sited "developments". (Where next? A new highway through, say, the Killarney National Park? A fitting parallel would the Gap of Dunloe, still accessible only to horse-drawn and pedalled vehicles!).
The environment is a global issue, but it calls for involvement and action at a local level. In keeping the Glen of the Downs situation in the public eye over the past three years, the "Glen Guardians" have mounted a brave challenge to our priorities in this country. We ignore their message at our peril. - Yours, etc.,
Daniel L. Kelly, Woodland Ecologist and Senior Lecturer in Botany, Whitebeam Road, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14.