Category Archives for "Featured Articles"

Feb 09

The Irish Sea Network (ISN) releases its new report ‘Ecological Considerations for Marine Spatial Planning in the Irish Sea’.

  The Irish Sea Network (ISN) releases its new report ‘Ecological Considerations for Marine Spatial Planning in the Irish Sea’. Published: February 9th, 2024   The Irish Wildlife Trust, SWAN and 11 other environmental organisations across Ireland and the UK are urging their governments to take a collaborative and ecosystem based approach to marine spatial […]

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Feb 02

World Wetlands Day 2024

WORLD WETLANDS DAY 2024 World Wetlands Day stands as a global reminder of the crucial role wetlands play in maintaining biodiversity and ecological balance. These vibrant ecosystems are especially critical for iconic Irish species such as the Curlew, a bird whose calls are synonymous with Irish wetlands yet is alarmingly diminishing from our landscapes. The […]

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Mar 26

Goodbye to the Hills

Goodbye to the Hills Pádraic Fogarty 26th March 2023 At a conference in Galway dedicated to the management of Ireland’s uplands regions, speaker after speaker raised concerns about the ecological degradation caused by over-grazing, the low returns for farmers on their sheep as well as the need for diversification and more native woodland in the […]

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Feb 20

The failure of fisheries science

The failure of fisheries science In 2013, as part of an overhaul of the Common Fisheries Policy, the European Union committed to ending overfishing by 2015 ‘where possible’ and by 2020 ‘at the latest’. Needless to say, this deadline came and went but a successful legal challenge by Friends of the Irish Environment in the […]

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Nov 27

Restoring nature must be central to climate action

Restoring nature must be central to climate action By Padraic Fogarty, IWT Campaigns Officer Two reports in the past two months focussed the world’s attention – if only briefly – on the dire state of our planet. The first, from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) laid out in stark terms how there […]

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Nov 21

Where’s the ‘Wild’ in Wild Nephin?

Many Irish wildlife enthusiasts have been asking one question over the past year – what’s going on with the Wild Nephin Project? Lenny Antonelli digs a little deeper. Jointly announced three years ago by the State forestry company Coillte and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), the Wild Nephin Project’s stated aim is to […]

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Oct 29

Review of Doorstep Wilderness: A Wilder Side of Dublin

Doorstep Wilderness: A Wilder Side of Dublin is a book by Paul Hughes, a full-time photographer and member of the Irish Wildlife Trust and Birdwatch Ireland. It details the life of a stretch of the River Dodder, mostly between Ballsbridge and the railway bridge at Lansdowne Station, between the spring of 2008 and summer 2012. […]

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Apr 20

Review of Birds of the Homeplace

A review by Rónán McLaughlin. Many years ago as a child growing up in Malin head, Co. Donegal, I was surrounded by nature. It was everywhere and everything we did revolved around it. We farmed, we fished and we felt grateful for the arrival of the swallow and we had a somewhat somber feeling when […]

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