There Is Only One Earth

The Lord God then took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.
And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food.
Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so”. [Book of Genesis].

There is only one ‘Earth’ as we know it and in the last 50 years, the human population has doubled, our global economy has quadrupled and global trade has increased ten times.

Presently, 1.6 Earths would be required to meet the demands that we as humans now make on mother nature each year.

Here in Thurles and elsewhere engineers, fronted by pointless, powerless elected local representatives, continue to make changes to our ecosystem without the consent of our local community. Some do so knowingly, others are negligent through wilful ignorance and a lack of basic biodiversity education.

Biodiversity encompasses the millions of species resident on our planet, from our plant life; our animals, to the fungi and bacteria and the genetic diversity among them.

The very air we breathe, the water and food we consume all rely on biodiversity. Thus when one of these components are changed or removed, then the entire system becomes affected, thus producing a positive or, worse still, a negative consequence on our communities.

Think about it for a moment. Nature provides us with our oxygen, it purifies the water we drink, it ensures fertile soil, and it produces the variety of foods we require to stay healthy and to resist the abnormal condition that negatively affects our bodies. With growing everyday knowledge, it offers substances for developing medicines and even helps mitigate the impact of climate change by storing carbon and regulating local rainfall.

It is therefore with great disappointment, over the past 12 days we have watched the destruction of biodiversity at Lady’s Well in Thurles and the total disregard for Section 40 of the Wildlife Act, by Green Party Minister Mr Malcolm Noonan and his staff at the National Parks & Wildlife Service, latter who were warned in advance of this intended destruction.

Tarmac now appears to be the order of the day, removing the naturally occurring Bluebells, Primroses, Dandelines, Daffodils, Cowslips, Woodland Violets, Cow Parsley, Cuckoo Flower, Buttercups, Yellow Iris, Brassica, all evident for the enjoyment of the leisurely walker.
Gone also are the 3 seats, so enjoyed by the unhurried elderly visitor.

Trees and their roots have been damaged while the quality of the water in the river Suir itself is being continuously ignored, courtesy of Irish Water, which allows sewage to flow, unabated, into the river.

The main purposes of introducing Section 40 of the Wildlife Act, was to protect bird life during the nesting season, to help prevent forest fires, and to protect vegetation and wildlife habitats during the months of growth and reproduction.
A closed period between March 1st and August 31st was set out in this legislation, during which a prohibition remains in place on the destruction of any vegetation on “land not then cultivated” and of any vegetation growing in a ditch or hedge.

We have a situation here in Thurles where Tarmac is being put everywhere except in our street surface potholes.

Like so many other laws in Ireland, in the words of William Shakespeare, (Hamlet) same are, to our shame, “more honoured in the breach than in the observance.”