My most telling early environmental education was on the precarious state of the Great Western Lakes – notably, Loughs Corrib, Mask and Carra. These limestone lakes have some of the best wild brown trout fisheries in Europe. Factoring in their catchments, they are also critically important salmonid waters for salmon and sea trout.
Understanding their vulnerability during the 1980s and 1990s came courtesy of a great environmentalist, Tony Waldron from Ballymote, Co Sligo, who was then the driving force behind the Carra-Mask Angling Federation. Spelling wasn’t his strongest suit but he wrote remarkably prescient letters to government ministers, State agencies and those at the highest level of the EU.
He had a way of saying: “You can’t ignore this; the environmental clock is ticking. Further inaction will make things worse. If you choose to ignore these warning signs, on your head be it!” It knocked heads together.
One finding since, however, was upsetting as I’m familiar with Carra’s beauty and vulnerabilities. “The most spectacular marl lake in Ireland, if not western Europe, Lough Carra shows signs of significant degradation of deepwater communities and a dramatic reduction of euphotic depth in some of its basins, as well as a 75 per cent reduction in brown trout populations since 2000.”
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Attending a Saving Our Lakes conference hosted by The Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations (an all-island entity) at the University of Ulster in Belfast earlier this summer, there was a sense of too little action evident since. The appalling state of Lough Neagh and Lady’s Island lagoon in Wexford indicate the problems are much the same, north and south.
Waldron’s warning was apt here too. Once lake systems go beyond a certain point due to over-enrichment by nitrogen and phosphorus, restoring them is a long, hard journey of decades. Returning to a pristine condition is almost impossible.
We can’t even achieve “good” at the scale required. Of 21 primary monitored lake-water bodies in Northern Ireland (those over 50 hectares), only five achieved good ecological status. The remaining 16 lakes were classified as moderate, poor or bad, with no lakes achieving “high” ecological status.
In the Republic, there has been unrelenting deterioration of lakes, rivers and estuaries with almost half of them now in an unhealthy condition. Just 52 per cent of more than 4,000 water bodies monitored over the past five years achieved a satisfactory rating.
In an opening address to the conference, Prof Catherine Dalton, co-chair of the All Island Climate and Biodiversity Research Network, provided a compelling picture of the layered complexity and unique role of lakes. Her account of what they do and what they indicate was captivating.
A simple photograph was enough to illustrate their role “as quiet witnesses, as archives, as living records, as wildernesses, as cultural snapshots, as thresholds, as lenses, as amenities, as mirrors, as shared commons…”
There was a hard scientific lesson too – maintaining the status quo over recent decades has not been so good. All too often, a lake retained good status when those with intimate knowledge of their ecosystems sensed decline. The latter proved true.
Dalton’s conclusion is “stability is not an option, but participating in directing change might be, if we recognise it”. A case of many small changes and actions adding up to a substantive response – a recipe for meaningful action on climate and nature loss.
Key stakeholders were at the Belfast gathering, including anglers. Many were doing impactful things informed by science, often working together with strong community participation.
That is typified in the Lough Carra Life Project, launched in 2023, as well as those fighting a rearguard action on Lough Neagh. The latter grouping have received a timely boost since, with €57 million announced for an all-island co-operative Lough Neagh catchment area water-quality programme, including on-farm measures. Funding is from the Government (including the Shared Island Initiative) and Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.
This recognises the island as a distinct environmental unit that benefits from working together on cross-Border environmental management issues.
There is much to do. Polarisation and mistrust between farmers and environmentalists is blocking progress in too many places. There is a glaring absence of a land-use plan for the island. There is a lack of effective governance at the highest level of Government in relation to nature and its restoration. The responsiveness of agencies when pollution events occur is too slow and incoherent. With that said, a new national protocol for fish mortality incidents in freshwater, announced following the fish kill in the River Blackwater in Co Cork last year, is welcome.
For starters, a single transformative action would be to recognise lakes are alive; they have environmental rights – and humans should be appointed as guardians to defend those rights set out in law.
Kevin O’Sullivan is an environmental commentator and consultant
