Why are there farm animals in our National Parks?
(L-R) Michael McDonagh, National Monument Service (NMS) chief archaeologist, Malcolm Noonan Minister of State for Heritage, Niall Ó Donnchu Director General of National Parks and Wildlife Service, and Minister Darragh O’Brien Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage at Dowth Hall on the occasion of the announcement of the State purchase of Dowth Hall and demesne and the establishment of Ireland’s 7th National Park. Picture: Maxwells Map: Nationalparks.ie
What comes to mind when you think of a National Park? Great expanses of wilderness? Areas with the highest levels of protection for nature? Places where wild nature can be enjoyed in its purest form?
I imagine that most people do not associate the idea of National Parks with farming and farm animals — don’t we have plenty of space for that already?
This autumn, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) announced that Ireland is about to get a new National Park in the Boyne Valley, County Meath, where the State has purchased land from Devenish Nutrition, an agri-food company which had been carrying out research on the lands. It brings to seven the number of National Parks in Ireland. [exa.mn/bs9]
Speaking to RTÉ's programme, director of the NPWS, Niall O’Donnchu, said that the new acquisition “responds to a number of things that the [NPWS] is about. Clearly the agri-economy piece of it, and that is fascinating for us”.
He also said that all of our National Parks “conform to the IUCN guidelines”. This is the International Union for the Conservation of Nature which monitors the status of protected areas globally. Their guidelines for National Parks is Category II: “large natural or near natural areas set aside to protect large-scale ecological processes, along with the complement of species and ecosystems characteristic of the area”.
The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage also states that the new National Park in Meath will be managed “as a designated Category II National Park”.
This is a bizarre claim if it is to be managed as a centre for farm research.
Dowth and its surrounds are rich in human and archaeological heritage and there is certainly a need for a research farm that is focussed on nature restoration in these types of landscapes. But don’t we already have a farm research body in Ireland, Teagasc?
And why is the NPWS trying to lead us into thinking that it will somehow be managed to protect functioning ecosystems? Indeed, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who believes that any of our national parks are managed for such a function.
Given that not a single one of our National Parks operates under a current management plan, how these areas are managed —or not managed — remains a mystery to everyone bar a handful of individuals charged with running them.
The NPWS recently provided me with data revealing that far from being managed for “large-scale ecological processes”, our National Parks are predominantly just extensions of the farmland that surrounds them. They show that private grazing rights are granted in four out of six National Parks — while in three of them the NPWS themselves manage varying numbers of livestock.
This includes nearly 3,500 sheep in the Wicklow Mountains National Park; 80 Kerry cattle in Killarney; 28 cattle and 232 sheep in Wild Nephin, County Mayo; while in Connemara the NPWS maintains an assortment of 7 ponies, 23 cattle, 68 sheep, two donkeys, two pigs and three ‘old Irish’ goats in addition to private grazing rights for 95 sheep. Glenveagh in Donegal is the only National Park with no farm animals.
National Parks (as they are predominantly not fenced) can be subject to trespassing by sheep with no grazing rights, as well as herds of feral goats, all adding to the already intense grazing pressure in these areas.
Given that our National Parks are small and still few in number, and that nearly all of Ireland’s surface area is devoted to grazing farm animals or agriculture in one form or another, why is there such enthusiasm for still more cattle, sheep and ponies?
It’s true that small numbers of traditional cattle breeds can be useful for maintaining biodiversity value in some circumstances. In the Burren National Park in County Clare, farmers are part of a much-lauded conservation programme that maintains the diversity of flower-rich meadows.
However, given the harm that free-roaming sheep and other grazers cause on our hills, resulting in peatland degradation and the prevention of any natural regeneration of wild trees, how can it be that so many of them are permitted to roam places like Wicklow Mountains and Wild Nephin?
The blanket bog habitats of Wild Nephin are particularly sensitive to grazing pressure and even low numbers of sheep can prevent any kind of recovery.
As for Connemara, it appears that this small National Park (only 2,000 hectares) is being run as some kind of a farm petting zoo. Where is the space for wild nature, or naturally functioning ecosystems?
It has been acknowledged that National Parks in Ireland have no foundational legislation — basically they don’t exist in law. Since our first National Biodiversity Action Plan in 2002, it has been an objective to remedy this. The latest reform of the NPWS set an objective for draft legislation to be published in June of this year, but there is no sign of it. The same document says that draft management plans for each of the National Parks will be prepared by December of this year. If these documents do appear, it is essential that standards in management of these lands be clearly outlined.
We expect the NPWS to be the agency in Ireland to prioritise the recovery of nature and to champion places where the restoration of biodiversity is the number one priority, not to run our National Parks as if they were farms.
