Firestarters are causing huge damage to our wildlife

‘I’M a firestarter, twisted firestarter’ is a line from the song Firestarter by UK band The Prodigy. One can see farmers of west Cork and Kerry raving in the flame light as this thumping electronic punk track echoes across the hillside, drowning out the screams of wildlife caught in a hot and smoky gorse furnace of death.

The rush to burn before March 1 takes no account of conservation, wildlife and community.

The match hand does its work while the other hand displays a one-finger gesture to society.

The approach where land clearing by burning is legal within a defined season, but no landowner is willing to be identified in engaging in this practice, is telling.

Having destroyed habitats, killed wildlife and caused social disruption, now is not the time for a landowner to say, ‘I did that’.

As for getting justice for the burnt, while the relevant authorities are doing their best, the wheels of justice turn with all the speed of treacle flowing uphill.

Ireland’s conservation of the environment and its biodiversity registers a D-minus. The Government is trying but A grade actions are shied away from.

These actions would include banning all fire-driven landclearance methods and all forms of live hunting including hare coursing, as well as stopping State-sponsored snaring/shooting of badgers and adding legal protection to mammals such as the fox, currently not protected under wildlife legislation.

Land clearance by fire may appeal to a primitive need to control one’s environment. However, it is out of place in a society that has moved on from loincloths and cave-dwelling.

Any landowner with a pyromania bent might take an aural note of another Prodigy song, World’s On Fire, and the line, ‘The world’s on fire, And it’s too close to the wire’. For the firestarter hiding in the gorse bush, put that in your matchbox and leave the redtops unlit. JOHN TIERNEY, campaigns director, Association of Hunt

Saboteurs, Dublin 1.

Gender issues

IT’S not as if life isn’t difficult enough for teenagers, having to make their mind up on a range of issues in relation to education, jobs, migration or even marriage.

Now the unintended consequence of children being burdened with the additional trauma of having to decide whether they want to be defined as he, she or they is making front-page news.

Sure, there is no denying that there are people out there questioning their accepted gender, but that is not the point.

The point is that if parents instil questionable doubts in the minds of youngsters, they will be confused as children and more so when they reach adulthood.

When they do reach that ‘making babies is possible’ stage in their lives, it will be more obvious as to what direction they want to follow in the gender stakes.

Pushing this agenda of referring to pupils using pronouns other than he or she leaves primary school teachers in a difficult position if their moral and religious ethos trumps all else (the Enoch Burke situation was an extreme case).

Children should remain as children without overloading their thought process with a fluctuating non-binary gender identity.

JAMES WOODS, Gort an Choirce, Dún na nGall.

Room at the inn?

REGARDING refugees – what about all the property owned by all the churches, idle and empty for most if not all of the week? Is there no room at the thousands of empty inns?

PETER McGINNITY, by email.

Fine fillies

FASHION designer Stella McCartney’s vegan show in a riding ring was lost on me. I thought she was indicating models are clothes horses.