Press Release: Time to find solutions to extreme flooding and stop obsessing on EU nature laws

The Irish Wildlife Trust (IWT) is calling on politicians to find effective solutions to the problem of extreme flooding. With climate change likely to increase the frequency and intensity of these events it is more important than ever that we find long-term, cost effective solutions that allow us to adapt. Such solutions can be found in nature, particularly through the restoration of wetlands, bogs and native woodlands. Dredging of rivers is not a solution to extreme flooding even if it were practical along the River Shannon.

IWT Campaigns Officer Pádraic Fogarty says, “certain politicians and farming leaders are obsessing on the EU’s Habitats Directive and for some reason are fixated on river dredging. The problems we have today are exacerbated by the historic drainage of river catchments, infilling of wetlands and removal of bogs from the landscape. It is more than ironic that these are the same people who want to do nothing to halt the march of greenhouse gases from the agribusiness sector. It’s time we found real solutions to this problem that work with nature and not against it.”

Photo: Graham Horn [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons