Wildlife activist Padraic Fogarty casts a cold eye on public policy

Long-time wildlife campaigner and author of the widely praised Whittled Away: Ireland’s Vanishing Nature (Collins Press), Padraic Fogarty takes a fresh approach in his new book, Shaping New Mountains. As he couldn’t find a publisher – Collins Press closed in 2019 – he has opted to stream free weekly episodes on podcasts (via Apple and Spotify) and on the Irish Wildlife Trust website.

Sharing his views and knowledge about nature in this way may seem like a radical move which eschews the traditional publishing model but Fogarty is unfazed. “I’m completely obsessed with it at this stage and I find writing allows me to get to the bottom of things,” he explains, as we chat on a socially distanced park bench in Marlay Park, Rathfarnham.

Well known for his outspoken criticism of Ireland’s failures to protect and restore our natural environment, Fogarty – as the Irish Wildlife Trust’s campaigns officer – continues to berate Ireland’s neglect of nature in the book but he also writes about champions of the natural world and speaks strongly about the need for an ethical approach.

“We now have the solutions to many of the problems facing the natural world such as peatland restoration, agro-ecology and marine-protected areas. I wanted to let people know that a lot of individuals out there are finding solutions,” he says.

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In the book, he teases out some of these solutions with people who believe in them. So, he visits Ticknock Forest in the Dublin Mountains with Ciaran Fallon from Coillte Nature who speaks about the plans for naturally regenerated forests and native woodlands across a swathe of land there.

But for Dublin to be a real “natural capital”, says Fogarty, we need many more trees, cleaner rivers and canals and constructed wetlands and farms on rooftops across the city.

Perhaps, the most controversial of Fogarty's proposed solutions is Bear Country

Other ideas he explores are the Ulster Shark Coast which could bring tourists and traditional fishing to marine protected areas, the Shannon Wilderness Park (ironically now one of the few Bord Na Móna industrial peatland sites which won’t be rewetted due to plans for a wind farm there) and the Wild Atlantic Rainforest in southwest Cork-Kerry where native woodlands could provide a network on habitats interwoven with farms and patches of open hillside. The Wild Atlantic Rainforest could also be a terrific place to visit.

Perhaps, the most controversial of Fogarty’s proposed solutions is Bear Country, an idea to rewild parts of west Galway and Mayo with wolves, bears and lynx.

“I’m convinced that people care about nature but that many are unsure what to think and how to act on it. Most of these ideas need local buy-in, scientists and the support of the state for financing and enforcement,” says Fogarty.

Fogarty believes that legal approaches to protecting nature have failed us.

In Shaping New Mountains, he outlines all the major European environmental legislation (the habitats directive, birds directive, etc) and the United Nations targets for halting biodiversity loss – including the new target to protect 30 per cent of land and 30 per cent of our seas by 2030.

“There’s no point in producing laws if we don’t have an ethical will to see the value in nature. I think there is currently a revolution in our values and we will look back in 10 years’ time and be horrified that the State was such a law breaker in this regard.”

He notes how the national biodiversity forum audit of Ireland’s national biodiversity action plan identified the State as the greatest committer of wildlife crime. “What’s the value of biodiversity plans if the Government policy in agriculture and infrastructure is directly opposed to it,” he says.

Fogarty believes we have all been conned by “the capitalist system that doesn’t serve nature or people”.

We need an ethical approach to land as well as an environmental and economic one

“We don’t appreciate that we are living in an age of over-production which helps to explain why farmers don’t get a good price for high quality produce. World hunger won’t be solved by industrial farming. We need an ethical approach to land as well as an environmental and economic one.”

He supports the so-called doughnut-economics model where not overshooting planetary boundaries is deemed to be the key to humanity’s future. He also agrees with Environmental Protection Agency director Laura Burke’s call for an over-arching policy for the environment rather than the current fragmented polices for climate action, biodiversity, water and air quality, etc.

“A land use plan could bring together agriculture, forestry, water quality, peatlands and high nature value farming,” he suggests. He says that the environmental-pillar decision to leave the Department of Agriculture committee on the future of agriculture and food production highlighted that committee’s “reluctance to face facts about the limits to food production in terms of pollution of our waters, etc”.

Fogarty is cautiously optimistic about Malcolm Noonan’s role as Minister of State for Heritage.

“It’s been tough for the last 10 years because we haven’t had a minister [with this portfolio] with an interest in biodiversity since John Gormley. Malcolm Noonan is familiar with the issues, has a clear interest and is willing to fight for what’s needed,” he says.

He praises Noonan’s increased funding to the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) and looks forward to the review of the NPWS in June, 2021. But, he is quick to ask whether politicians “will devote the money” to Noonan’s recent announcement that €1.38 billion will be required to protect Ireland’s habitats and species up to 2027. He also questions what exactly it means that Ireland has signed up to the so-called High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People at the One Planet Summit hosted by France in January 2021.

“Does it mean that Ireland will protect 30 per cent of its land and sea when we are not even meeting our current targets of protecting 13 per cent of our land through Natura 2000 sites?” asks Fogarty.

He believes the Covid-19 pandemic has given us an opportunity to see the connections between different things. “We now know that climate action on its own is not enough if we continue on the extinction \[of species] path,” he says.

Part of the ethical response to solving things is to see nature as a family member

Yet he berates the media for not drawing connections between habitat destruction, intensive farming and the spread of such diseases. “People are not hearing the message that ecological destruction and Covid are connected – that diseases spread very quickly when animals are held in close quarters.”

Ultimately, Fogarty says that Covid has “underlined the falsehood that humans aren’t part of nature. Part of the ethical response to solving things is to see nature as a family member. We wouldn’t allow it to be destroyed the way it has been if we did that.”

• Padraic Fogarty is streaming free weekly episodes of his new book, Shaping New Mountains on podcasts and on the Irish Wildlife Trust website