Wildlife laws — but in name are a load of bull
IMPROMPTU meetings are often the best, like the one I enjoyed recently with my friendly farmer’s lovely wife, during which I showed her my phone screen-saver photo of a bull that I pass on a walk. No real surprise that I have a soft spot for these animals, given one of my favourite words is ‘bulls**t.’ It’s satisfying to say and encapsulates a sense of frustration at stupidity.
Though there is too much brutal bulls**t going on around rural Ireland to laugh it off. Because never have I seen anything like the frenzy of hedge cutting and tree felling, over the past year in particular. It’s almost like a mini-Amazon scenario with loggers razing the rainforest, except it’s happening here, and decimating our biodiversity.
But the bulls**t gets worse. For despite the fact that you can hack away at these last refuges of wildlife for half the year, with permanent allowances for road safety, that’s not enough for some farmers. I was one of several appalled locals who witnessed the illegal scalping of hedgerows in what was arguably one of the most beautiful places in Ireland, with virgin forest and meadows, till the landowner started renting it.
And forget the bulls**t that urges members of the public to report this illegal activity, because doing so is likely to prove a thankless waste of your time.
Firstly, the gardai are chronically under-resourced and overwhelmed as stations across rural Ireland continue to close. Little wonder if calls relating to wildlife are sometimes met with impatience. Especially when it hampers them dealing with ‘real’ crimes, where people are harmed.
Yet the consequences of these crimes against the environment will be felt not so far down the road, when not just the guilty will pay, but also the innocent. By then it will be too late to put things right. Our grandchildren will curse our bulls**t indifference and ignorance.
For some gardai don’t seem familiar with the law, specifically Section 40 of the Wildlife Act, and think owning land gives you the license to do whatever the hell you want to it.
Yet isn’t that the problem in a nutshell? Too many folk still have the attitude that wildlife are pests, or trespassers with no rights, to what is, in fact, their habitat.
Add to this the fact that the National Parks and Wildlife Service is likewise so under-resourced that there is no one to cover if the person responsible is incapacitated. Callers were told they would have to wait a few days.
By which time the damage was done. As the guy in the JCB illegally ripping up trees said, he would be finished in an hour. That’s all the time you need to destroy what takes decades to replace — if that’s even possible.
What would John
Healy, author of No One Shouted Stop! think of today’s scenario, where someone actually shouts stop about the death of the Irish countryside — as the authorities advise — but no one comes to help?
Unadulterated bulls**t, that’s what.