The National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) had grim news to report to Brussels recently. The status of 90 per cent of Ireland’s ecosystems designated as specially important by the EU’s Habitats Directive is “unfavourable”. This is five per cent up on its last such report in 2019. More than half of them are described as “unfavourable/bad”, and 51 per cent of them remain on a downward trajectory.
This abysmal report card, and it is important to remember that it comes from the State service charged with the protection and restoration of these habitats.
This outcome is symptomatic of the State’s ongoing failure to recognise the core importance to national well-being of natural infrastructure. Indeed, the report came hard on the heels of the Government’s successful push to further extend the State’s derogation from the EU’s Nitrates Directive, despite well-founded expert evidence that this is a key factor in the chronic pollution of so many waterways and water bodies.
Such decisions make a nonsense of the response to the report by the Minister of State responsible for the NPWS, Chris O’Sullivan, claiming that there have been “huge efforts to turn the tide of biodiversity loss in recent years”. The big efforts– just think of the ongoing destruction of hedgerows by public and private actors – are all too often in the opposite direction.
It is true that NPWS funding has been ramped up from some €27 million in 2020 to €100 million in Budget 2026, and that staffing has increased by 68 per cent in the same period. These are welcome developments. But until the service has the capacity – and the full backing of Government – to engage convincingly with local communities, and where necessary to enforce environmental regulations forcefully, it will continue to be sidelined to reporting on continuing degradation.
The picture is not all black. The majority of species of concern covered by the Habitats Directive remain in favourable condition, though 20 per cent are still labelled ‘bad’. And some habitats are benefitting from restoration measures. Active raised peat bogs are showing their first increase since reporting began.
But the report demonstrates that there is a very long way to go to meet the targets of the EU’s new Nature Restoration Law, just coming into effect. This law aims to restore 20 per cent of land and sea areas by 2030, and repair all ecosystems in need of restoration by 2050.
The first step to achieving these ambitious but necessary targets must be a big public awareness campaign, reminding us that Ireland’s natural infrastructure is the essential basis of built infrastructure and the economy. Understanding this would enable the public to recognise the latest NPWS report as the wake-up call to a national emergency.