Archive News
Wildflower conservation project starts to blossom
Date Published: 12-Apr-2012
A day that gives you the chance to enjoy some exercise and fresh air while doing some good for your community – that’s what’s on offer under a new scheme by Conservation Volunteers Galway. The project involves planting wildflower meadows to attract bees and butterflies, which are so vital in pollinating flowers and the crops we eat.
The wildflower scheme is being organised by the group which has already planted over 1,000 native trees in Galway city, pruned an oak plantation in Portumna Forest Park and planted a host of daffodil and tulip bulbs in the Doughiska area of the city.
The organisation, which has the support of Galway City Council’s Parks and Wildlife Department, relies heavily on volunteers for its work, explains its chairperson Caitríona Cunningham.
As the name implies the group is all about conserving and enhancing the environment in which we live, and wildflowers have a huge role to play in that.
“There has been a serious decrease in birds and bees, because of urbanisation, increased infrastructure and agricultural intensification,” says Caitríona. And that’s a cause for concern, because 99 per cent of our flowers are pollinated by bees and butterflies, she adds.
These include strawberries, apples, blackberries, raspberries, onions and carrots.
“So, to protect them, it’s important to plant wildflowers in April and May and to leave some long grass in your garden,” explains Caitríona about the difference people can make at home. Because a wild flower area only needs to be mown just once a year, like you would a field of hay, it means less mowing of the lawn. So, it’s also more economically viable than wheeling out the lawnmower on a weekly basis, she points out.
On a larger scale, there’s the planting of wildflower meadows in public spaces, as is happening this Sunday, April 15 and on Saturday, April 21 under the auspices of Conservation Ireland Galway.
At present this wildflower programme is confined to the city, but there are plans to extend the scheme to towns in the county at a later stage.
The three areas earmarked for planting in Galway City are Lough Atalia, the children’s playground at the Atlantaquaria, and Grattan Terrace.
Volunteers will also be asked to take part in litter picking on the day, as part of the An Taisce’s national clean-up project, which runs throughout April.
The City Council will supply the seed for the public plantings, says Caitríona, who adds that people who want to create a wildflower area in their own garden can buy these seeds in garden centres. There are special ones for attracting bees and butterflies, as well as flowers which thrive in shade or semi-shade, so there are lots to choose from.
“We are going away from flower hegemony; it’s kind of going back to basics because birds and bees are declining.”
Caitríona’s enthusiasm for the work of the conservation group is infectious – she talks a mile to the minute during our interview and simultaneously jots down notes, reminding her to forward further information by email.
The habit of writing a task list comes from her days of teaching, she laughs.
She trained as a primary teacher in Dublin and later went to Canada, where she did a degree in Environmental Science in Nova Scotia, subsequently working as an environmental consultant with an engineering company for a few years. But education was where her heart lay.
So she did a Masters in Trinity College on pollinators. It was part of a programme funded by the Environmental Protection Agency, which researched biodiversity in Ireland.
The study found that at a local scale, small areas of fragmented habitat are of equally high importance for wildlife as large areas and should be protected.
After graduation, while still living in Dublin, Caitríona got involved in Conservation Volunteers Ireland, which had started off in 1990 and was restructured in 2006. Based in Fingal, its revival was spearheaded by Fingal County Council’s biodiversity officer Hans Visser.
When Caitríona, who is originally from Ross, Castlebar, moved to Salthill in 2009, she saw a need for a similar conservation scheme in Galway.
“People were enthusiastic and wanted to conserve their environment,” she says, pointing to the strong Tidy Towns committees and the high rates of recycling locally. But there was no niche for these people when it came to conservation.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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