THE SIGHT OF leaves appearing on trees and birds gathering twigs for their nests is a reminder that spring is well underway. The Wildlife Act acknowledges the importance of this period by prohibiting the destruction of vegetation outside of cultivation between the beginning of March and the end of August.

This period is primarily timed to protect birds that are nesting, laying eggs and feeding young, but, in so doing, provides a security umbrella for plants, insects and small mammals. The Wildlife Act is out of date and has plenty of loopholes, but it at least provides this broad protection that most people understand is needed for a healthy countryside.

Unfortunately, the arrival of spring, and particularly a long spell of sunny, dry weather just like we’ve been having across Ireland, reminds some people not of the joys of nature, but of the ease with which land can be cleared by setting fire to it. In recent weeks, infernos have laid waste to parts of the Mourne Mountains in Co Down, Gorumna Island in Connemara, Killarney National Park in Kerry and Wild Nephin National Park in Mayo, where a much-used boardwalk over the bog was incinerated.

Bad as this is, things are not nearly as bad as they used to be. Wicklow Mountains National Park last year recorded its first year in memory with zero uncontrolled fires. Looking back a decade, every spring saw hundreds of fires across the country in boggy and upland areas, where they were seen as a quick and easy way of promoting the growth of grass for grazing sheep.

A mindset shift

However, locals are no longer tolerant of what was once considered a routine, if nuisance, activity. It is no longer socially acceptable to throw a match on a hill, and this shift in attitudes is mirrored in a hardening of rules from the Department of Agriculture. Farmers with burnt land are not eligible for subsidy payments during that year. This also goes for those cutting hedges during the nesting season, where a high level of social surveillance is now making anyone with the felling of trees on their mind think twice.

There has also been a change in rules from Brussels so that farmers are no longer penalised for having trees and bushes on their land, so the incentive to burn is much diminished. At the same time, the National Parks and Wildlife Service is now better positioned to deal with fires following investment in training and equipment. All the same, it is clear that we still have a problem.

One solution that has been proposed is goats. On Howth Head and Killiney Head, affluent suburbs of Dublin, goats are being deployed to eat down the vegetation to reduce the fire risk. From a fire management perspective, this makes sense: no vegetation equals no fuel for the fire. However, goats are a harmful invasive species precisely because they can eat their way through pretty much anything, including stripping the bark from trees. No vegetation also equals no natural regeneration of native plants and flowers, and so no birds or insects. Goats are clearly not the answer where the aim is also to protect or restore biodiversity.

Father Brian McKay of the Carmelite Church on Whitefriar Street pours holy water on the head of one of three goats during a blessing ceremony on Howth Head in Dublin, as three female goats were released onto the mountain as part of the 'Goat's for Howth' project to help with the grazing of vegetation on the mountainside.. Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

One thing that needs to change is the enforcement of the rules. We still see very few prosecutions for illegal burning and hedge-cutting (data released last year to Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan, now an MEP, showed that there were only 43 prosecutions for all types of wildlife crime in 2023, while some parts of the country see few or no prosecutions). Winning a court case is a battle in itself, but the penalties upon conviction are so low as to scarcely be a deterrent: €600 for burning a hillside or €300 for removing a hedgerow during the nesting season in two instances cited in Boylan’s data. We need to add a couple of zeros to these fines if would-be perpetrators are to take this issue seriously.

Stripping nature of resources

The other, bigger issue is the state of our countryside. Decades of misguided farming practices have promoted land drainage, straightening of streams and rivers and over-grazing of boglands with sheep. These policies were designed to dry out land to make it more productive for grazing livestock. The result has been biodiversity wipeout, pollution and a landscape that quickly becomes tinder dry after a week of sunshine in March or April.

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Undoing this damage, through the rewetting of bogs and the establishment of native trees and forests, would hold on to water for longer, so that even if a fire were to occur, the damage would be much less severe. But even though government policy has moved on somewhat, there are still no programmes to provide farmers with an alternative to sheep farming in favour of rewilding or nature-friendly farming. In fact, it is still taboo in many quarters to name the fact that these policies have been a disaster.

The situation with hedgerows is little different, and public subsidies paid to farmers still do not reward nurturing and protection of these vital habitats.

The key to unlocking these issues is stiffer penalties for those committing wildlife crimes, but also the redirection of the billions of euros in public funds which are funnelled into unsustainable farming practices. The same money could maintain farmers’ incomes while also drastically improving the state of our countryside and preventing the kind of harm we have become all too used to.

Pádraic Fogarty is an environmental campaigner.