Stony seaboard, far and foreign,
Stony hills poured over space,
Stony outcrop of the Burren,
Stones in every fertile place.
Little fields with boulders dotted,
Grey-stone shoulders saffron spotted . . .
That's how John Betjeman summed up the Burren in his poem 'Ireland with Emily'. It is not, perhaps, the most comprehensive description of this uniquely valuable area of northwest Clare, but it does convey a sense of the overwhelming bareness of its characteristic limestone landscape.
The "soil-less, treeless, waterless" hills of the Burren (from Boireann, meaning rocky place) also made a big impression on Robert Lloyd Praeger. In his classic, The Way That I Went, he wrote: "The strangeness of this grey limestone country must be seen to be realised; it is like nothing else in Ireland or in Britain."
Praeger, a founder-member and first president of An Taisce, understood very well that what makes the Burren so unique is its remarkable flora, from Alpine spring gentian to exotic Mediterranean orchids. "Over miles the grey limestone is converted into a veritable rock garden in spring, brilliant with blossom."
According to the splendid Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, "ecological diversity is one of the great attractions of the Burren - its gentians and orchids, its otters and pine-martens, its wheatears and stonechats, its pearl-bordered fritillaries - a remarkable profusion that is now under intense pressure".
Burren enthusiast Gordon D'Arcy, a Belfast-born environmentalist living in Co Galway, estimates that 70 per cent of Ireland's wild plants grow here in less than 0.5 per cent of the island's area. "Some of the most vulnerable and rare habitats in Europe - limestone grassland, karst, turloughs - exist here in pristine condition."
Karst is the geological term for the type of limestone beds that extend over an area of 360 square kilometres in the Burren, while turloughs - from turlach, a dried-up spot - are lakes that rise in wet weather and then largely disappear into swallow-holes linked to a vast network of drains and caves beneath the stony surface.
The Burren's archaeological heritage is also disproportionately large, offering evidence of human settlement in this upland area stretching back through six millennia. It includes no less than 350 ring forts, notably Cahercommaun, as well as 70 wedge tombs, the highest concentration known, and numerous fulacht fiadha (cooking sites).
The gentian, not surprisingly, was adopted as a logo by the Burren Centre in Kilfenora, opened by President Cearbhall ╙ Dβlaigh in 1975 and re-opened, refurbished and extended last September by S∅le de Valera, the Minister for Arts, Heritage, the Gaeltacht and the Islands, and one of Clare's Fianna Fβil TDs.
Two weeks ago, de Valera announced that the State had finally purchased the Poulnabrone dolmen - one of the most important of the Burren's archaeological monuments - from Tommy Byrnes, a local farmer, for £300,000.
This would allow D·chas, the Heritage Service, to manage visitor access, she said.
Byrnes said he was "lonely parting with the dolmen" and 16 acres surrounding it, but it was now "in good hands". For years, he had collected donations from tourists "for the upkeep of the walls", according to a hand-painted poster on the site, though he was unable to prevent the monument being defaced.
The dolmen, which is 5,800 years old, attracts at least 100,000 visitors a year, with the narrow road alongside congested by parked cars and touring coaches at peak periods. Under the management plan being drawn up by D·chas, it is likely that part of the newly-acquired land will be set aside for a car and coach park.
The 16-acre site includes a large corrugated agricultural shed which, though painted grey to blend with the sky, has detracted from the dolmen's setting for years; mercifully, it is now likely to be demolished. But whether D·chas can get rid of dozens of "mini-dolmens", built in recent years on a freelance basis in the vicinity as tourist attractions, is another matter.
The most erroneous perception of the Burren is that it has been "saved" by the success of a long-fought campaign against the State's plans for a visitor centre within sight of Mullaghmore. All traces of its construction have now been wiped out, on foot of a High Court order, but the area's survival remains in jeopardy.
Since the 1970s, spurred on by the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, "land reclamation has converted more than 4 per cent of the Burren from rocky pasture, pavement or scrubland into large fields of seeded pasture, often used for silage production and no different in appearance or ecology to any area of lowland Ireland", according to the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. Such "drastic and irreversible changes in land use" have consumed more than 3,000 acres in the past decade alone, with "highly-fertilised emerald green fields" - as day-glo as The Field - "replacing unmodified and subtle-hued meadowland", in the words of Gordon D'Arcy.
The widespread switch from store-cattle to larger suckler herds has led to a "mushrooming" of slatted sheds, cow-feeding stations, barbed-wire fencing and stark new access roads. These undoubtedly contribute to local ground-water pollution from slurry and silage as well as from the liberal use of nitrogen-based fertilisers.
Intensive tourism is also a significant threat. Anyone who takes a look at the narrow road leading to the aborted Mullaghmore visitor centre would be incredulous that the Office of Public Works or D·chas were planning to lure thousands of visitors a year to this lonely spot in the most unspoiled part of the Burren.
The Aillwee Cave, the area's most popular attraction, may have slotted its visitor facilities discreetly into the landscape, but its billboards litter the roads of north Clare; one is plonked right in front of Leamanagh Castle.
Neither is there any shortage of banners flagging the Burren Exposure Centre near Ballyvaughan.
At Pol an Ionβin, near Doolin, local landowners are seeking to develop a cave even more impressive than Aillwee. Clare County Council's decision to approve their plans was appealed by An Taisce and overturned by An Bord Pleanβla last February, largely because the environmental impact had not been properly assessed.
Since then, the county council has reversed itself on the issue of whether exploratory work on the cave system is exempt development. Having decided that such work required planning permission, the council now maintains that it doesn't; as a result, excavations are being carried out to a depth of 65 metres at Pol an Ionβin.
But the most extraordinary sight is surely at Muckinish, where the late-medieval castle now has a mini-estate of townhouse-style holiday homes nudging its bawn-like enclosure. That such an appallingly intrusive scheme could have replaced an old farmhouse suggests that Ireland's planning laws are meaningless.
It's not as if Co Clare is short of lessons on the adverse impacts of tourism. Lahinch and Kilkee have been overwhelmed by clusters of holiday homes, levered by the insane scheme of tax incentives for seaside resorts, while the precious dunes at White Strand in Doonbeg have been cannibalised for luxury golf.
The spectacular view from Corkscrew Hill looking down towards Galway Bay doesn't seem to have altered that much. But here and there, throughout the Burren, road-widening is being used as an expedient solution to the problem of congestion; this, too, adversely affects the character of the landscape.
D'Arcy complains that "a traffic free-for-all results in gridlock over most weekends in Ballyvaughan, Corofin and Kinvara," at least in the summer months. However narrow the roads may be, local people "drive like the clappers", braking hard to avoid running into a lumbering herd of cattle, a truck or a tour bus.
Like other towns and villages throughout the State, Ballyvaughan is devalued by the usual plague of two-pane, swing-out PVC windows. Liscannor, inevitably, has a "rock shop" for tourists, while those with a fascination for Irish kitsch will find the gothic-turreted Burren Castle Hotel (once the Moher Motel) hard to beat.
New one-off houses, mostly quite substantial dormer bungalows in a quasi-vernacular style, are springing up around the edges of the Burren, particularly along the coast road through Fanore as well as in Ballyryan, Carran and Doolin. Their white walls glisten in the sun, like a less dense version of Connemara's coastal strip.
Though most of the new houses have stone walls on their road frontages, it would be impossible to integrate them into the environment. They stand out starkly, even awkwardly, introducing vertical points of emphasis into the largely horizontal landscape - and there are more under construction.
Clare County Council has sought to strike a balance between the many competing interests, but D'Arcy has "the uneasy impression that, in the absence of constant vigilance by a few concerned individuals, the Burren's sensitive and exposed profile would be bristling with masts, pylons and wind turbines".
He gives credit to the council for getting rid of the unofficial dumps that plagued the area in the 1980s, and also for the discreet picnic facilities provided at Lough Bunny. However, like many others with an intense interest in the Burren, he sees its long-term future as a national issue requiring action at Government level.
But if S∅le de Valera has a plan to protect the Burren, it is a closely-guarded secret. "Mullaghmore kept things 'on hold' for 10 years", says Prof Emer Colleran, one of the leading lights in the Burren Action Group's campaign. "All we've had is a lot of nice talk about protecting the natural environment, but very little action."
Prof Colleran is concerned about ad-hoc plans to provide lay-bys, car parks and toilets to "enhance" visitor access to the six most important archaeological monuments in the area, including Poulnabrone. Ten years on, she says, no firm decision has been made on the location of alternative visitor facilities for the Burren National Park.
"Effective landscape management at a regional scale is a long way off," according to the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape. As the authorities dither over what to do, patches of natural flora are "inexorably shrinking" and this "wholesale loss" of ecological diversity does not augur well for the future of the Burren.
"The situation is now precarious; without coherent policies, landscape and general environmental quality will rapidly deteriorate," its authors warned four years ago. "Above all, local communities need to become actively involved in sustaining their magnificent landscape." The only question is whether anybody is listening.
Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, edited by F.H.A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan and Matthew Stout, published by Cork University Press (1997)
The Way That I Went, by Robert Lloyd Praeger, first published by Hodges Figgis (1937). New edition, with an introduction by Michael Viney, published by the Collins Press, Cork (1997)