Don’t allow nature to be betrayed

Sir — We’d been led to believe in recent weeks that the new three-party Government would be among the greenest in Europe. But its proposal to move responsibility for nature to the Department of Housing doesn’t look very green to me. It’s about as environmentally friendly as the hole in the ozone layer.

What a truly lamentable start to the much-trumpeted efforts to tackle the escalating biodiversity crisis. Under this plan, the already under-funded and understaffed National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) could end up in a department that will be focused on sorting out the chronic housing crisis.

A UN-backed report last year revealed that an estimated one million plant and animal species worldwide are now threatened with extinction and declining at unprecedented rates. More than 90pc of 58 listed Irish habitats have been accorded an “inadequate” or “bad” status, and more than 60pc of the 202 species of commonly occurring birds in Ireland is now under threat.

The Irish hare, the very symbol of Irish biodiversity, has been in decline for the past 50 years, and yet successive governments have licensed the hunting and coursing of this iconic creature. And the state of our polluted rivers and lakes would make an angel weep.

If the Greens have any clout at all in this Government they should stand up for nature and say No to what would amount to a downgrading of the NPWS and a whopping slap in the face to the environmental movement in Ireland. Will we allow the betrayal of nature itself for the sake of some grubby political arrangement… or will our leaders, for once, do what is right as distinct from what is politically expedient?

John Fitzgerald,

Callan, Co Kilkenny