Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Time for words is over, it is action nature requires
THREE years ago the NI Threatened Bee Report highlighted how urgent action was needed to stop the extinction of some species over the next 10 years.
In 2021, the All-ireland Pollinator Plan for 2021-2025 – and that includes the North – was published.
It outlined some 186 actions which need to be taken to protect our pollinators in light of their impending demise.
On top of that we know Northern Ireland, much like the rest of the world, has been advised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to leave a third of our land to wildlife if we are to truly tackle the biodiversity crisis.
In this wee place, birds including starlings, curlews, corncrakes, roseate terns; the Irish damselfly and plants species the Irish Lady’s Tresses Orchid are already endangered.
While the Northern Ireland Priority Species list, which hasn’t been updated since 2007, includes everything from beetles to butterflies, crustaceans, fish, mammals, fungi, sponges and even moths.
There are 481 species on that list – up from 271 on the original.
And when the latest review is complete I dread to think how many creatures and plants will be on there.
But what, if anything tangible, is actually being done to protect the animals, plants and insects officially identified as needing our urgent help?
We still tip millions of gallons of sewage into our waterways polluting crustacean habitat.
We fail to meet ammonia and air pollution targets that are impacting plants, insects and birds alike.
And to see the amount of roadside verges, green areas, trees and hedgerows being decimated, burned, chopped down, strimmed and mowed to within an inch of their lives - even when the bird season ban is in force – you would think there’s no problem at all.
Don’t even get me started on the use of toxic glyphosate, which is still being sprayed in thousands of litres across our land.
Nature is collapsing around us while those in charge stand idly by – and even in some cases cause the harm.
More than one person has commented to me in recent weeks about how they’ve ‘never seen so many trees being cut down in their life’.
I have to agree. Everywhere you turn mature trees are being being cut down at the roots and hedgerows ripped out, even when there’s nesting birds inside.
I’ve witnessed professional arboricultural contractors tear down and mince trees within bird nesting season with my own eyes.
People are fed up with authorities paying lip service to the climate and biodiversity crises – and then acting as if neither are happening.
It’s high time our authorities had a long hard look at how what they say and do, as neither seem to match up.
Action, not more words, is what both we and nature need now.
that freezing February night were not so fortunate: six killed and 17 injured.
Muhamed, now 55, says: “My shoes got stuck in the mud so I was barefooted on the mountain.
“It was below zero, steep, rocky and muddy. I was sliding back and forth. We were constantly fired on, you could be killed at any single moment.
“But we had no other choice to get to the Eurovision Song Contest.”
He had hope too, not only of bolstering his nation but of being reunited with his girlfriend Sanda, who had escaped Sarajevo months earlier.
In Croatia, he was finally able to contact her. He says: “She was in shock. She said, ‘I knew you were crazy but this crazy I didn’t know’.”
Sanda flew to Ireland to be with him for the contest. He says: “The applause I will not forget as long as I live. I get
goosebumps every time I hear that. This weekend will be very important for the Ukrainian people. Morale will be high when they see the entirety of Europe is with them.”
Muhamed is speaking to the Mirror from Sarajevo, where he, Sanda and their daughter Sarah now live after spending years in the US after the war.
In April 1992, Muhamed was 25, a footballer and model, when Sarajevo was taken under siege and he had to flee his home to the other side of the city.
A former republic of Yugoslavia, when Bosnia Herzegovina’s independence was declared, a power struggle erupted. Bosnian Muslims became
victims of ethnic cleansing as Bosnian Serb forces laid siege to Sarajevo.
Muhamed recalls: “There was no food, no water, no electricity, no windows. I lost about 50lbs in the first year. We were surviving on humanitarian aid.”
He had recorded one song, and was called up to contribute to the resistance war effort.
He says: “Every pop and folk singer had to report for duty.
“We met secretly, we walked to the national TV centre, five miles, trying to hide.”
When he was invited to enter his song Sva bol svijeta – All the Pain in the World – in the national
Eurosong competition he never imagined winning. But the words chimed.
He says: “I was replicating how people felt – the whole world’s pain is in Bosnia tonight… I’m not afraid to stumble and fall, I’ll never stop singing, they will never take my soul.”
In Ireland, he felt he had landed on another planet. He says: “From having nothing to having everything. People didn’t understand what it was like. My mum learned about me through the media, I didn’t know if she was alive or dead in the moment I was performing.”
That night, by hook or by crook, Sarajevo tuned in to watch. The song finished 16th but Fazla was a hero.
After the contest, the band recorded an album and played humanitarian concerts, but then returned home to Bosnia and Herzegovina – and war.
Muhamed travelled the country, performing for troops. He says: “My conscience would haunt me for the rest of my life if I hadn’t gone back.
“Every day there were grenades but it was the least I could do.”
It was only after the signing of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, a ceasefire with the backing of NATO, that he and Sanda moved to the US, where he had a football academy and taught sociology, before returning two years ago.
Today, people still remember where they were that 1993 Eurovision night and the song is still sung in schools.
Muhamed says: “Even now when I walk the street they shout, ‘Fazla!’”
I didn’t know if my mother was alive or dead when I performed MUHAMED FAZLAGIC ON TORMENT BEHIND SHOW