{"id":628772,"date":"2026-09-18T17:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628772\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T17:52:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T17:52:19","slug":"scrub-clearance-in-curraheen-described-as-a-disaster-for-hedgehogs-birds-bats-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/628772\/","title":{"rendered":"Scrub clearance in Curraheen described as a &#8216;disaster&#8217; for hedgehogs, birds, bats and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"contextmenu internal_Body1st\">The clearing of vegetation growing alongside the N22 in Curraheen has been described by a leading Cork environmentalist as \u201can act of serious environmental destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The works, removing scrub along the grass margins on either side of the N22 link road from Poulavone to the N40 South Link Rd, south of the Killumney link east roundabout, began last week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The northbound bank has been extensively cleared, and work on the southbound side is ongoing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">The works are being carried out by contractors working on behalf of Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), the State agency responsible for developing and maintaining Ireland\u2019s national roads, greenways, and light rail transport networks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">A spokesperson for TII confirmed it was responsible for clearance of the vegetation adding the work was carried out because the scrub constituted \u201ca fire hazard\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Maria Young, co-ordinator of Cork city community-led eco group Green Spaces for Health and co-founder of the Cork Biodiversity Hub in Ballincollig Regional Park, said the grassy banks on either side of the N22 provided a habitat for multiple species of flora and fauna which, having survived \u2014 without incident \u2014 the hottest summer in years and heading into winter, was unlikely to now constitute a fire hazard.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThe contractors \u2014 who were very pleasant \u2014 said they were cutting the vegetation because it had gorse in in it, which they said was a fire hazard, and they had not been able to cut it in the summer because it had been the nesting season,\u201d Ms Young said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThat vegetation is dense, and it is full of all sorts of species, of which gorse is only one.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThere\u2019s hawthorn and multi-species of plants, and this is a natural corridor connecting Curraheen with Carrigrohane.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\n            \u201cYou may be sure there were plenty of animals living there \u2014 foxes, hedgehogs, birds, bats, and now there\u2019s nothing. It\u2019s absolutely ripped to the ground.\u201d\n        <\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">Ms Young questioned why Ireland has signed up to the All-Ireland biodiversity pollinating plan and other such biodiversity measures when State agencies \u201cdestroy what little we have left\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cThis is an act of serious environmental destruction, and I would ask has there been any sort of environmental impact assessment report done on the consequences to wildlife of this sort of wanton destruction,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"contextmenu Body Body\">\u201cIt\u2019s just heartbreaking, and it\u2019s very hard to take seriously the claim that this is being done to tackle a fire hazard when we\u2019ve just had the warmest summer on record.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The clearing of vegetation growing alongside the N22 in Curraheen has been described by a leading Cork environmentalist&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[18896,79,61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-628772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-sustainability-biodiversity","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628772"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628772\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}