Print
Wet is wonderful!
2 February 2012
Stephanie Sim
Public Relations Adviser
E-mail: stephanie.sim@rspb.org.uk
A visit to a wetland is a journey to another world. Every bit as teeming and exotic as a jungle, alive with buzzing, flitting insects, the call and splash of birds, tall rushes, colourful meadow blooms and swaying grasses. Noisy yet peaceful, open yet intimate, lush but spare, expansive but rich in minute treasures; wetlands are places of contrasts.
February 2 has been declared World Wetlands Day to celebrate these wonderful and valuable, but highly vulnerable habitats everywhere. This year the focus of the day is wetlands and tourism.
“Well-managed tourism in and around wetlands educates people on the long-term benefits these special places bring to humanity, wildlife, local economies and biodiversity,” said Seamus Burns, Restoration Officer, RSPB Northern Ireland.
In Northern Ireland, wetlands are among our most endangered habitats and have had a very hard time. From being drained, dumped on and polluted, they have suffered over the years, as has the wildlife that depends on them. However, the good news is that with the appropriate level of help wetlands can be restored successfully.
The RSPB, together with the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), are working with landowners within the Lough Neagh basin to do just that though a large landscape-scale conservation programme called Rebuilding the Countryside. This includes wet grassland restoration at Lough Beg in county Derry.
This site is of particular importance, as the wet grassland skirting the southern and western shores of Lough Beg in the Lough Neagh basin. It is one of the largest intact areas of such habitat remaining in Ireland. The low-lying floodplain features ‘Dubs’, water filled depressions surrounded by a grassy expanse - valuable for breeding and migrating waders and wintering wildfowl.
The grassland is an extensive mosaic of floodplain grazing marsh, purple moorgrass and rush pasture, all priority habitats that require careful restoration and management across the landscape.
So important is Lough Beg that it is recognised worldwide as a designated Ramsar site (along with Lough Neagh) – a wetland of international importance requiring careful management. The site is also designated a Special Protection Area under European law due to its importance for wintering and breeding wetland birds. Further, Lough Beg is designated an Area of Special Scientific Interest for the number of breeding waders, wintering wildfowl, rare plants and invertebrates found there.
Lough Beg is celebrated in the words of Seamus Heaney. For the poet, this spot evokes many memories and a sense of the dreamland that was once the real land, “a shore at evening...quiet water...wind in the grass...the calls of birds, maybe a man or a woman out in a back field just standing looking, counting cattle, listening.”
His hope: ”To make that country of the mind a reality once again...where the peewit and the curlew and the whirring snipe are as common as they used to be” when he was a boy in the 1940s”.
“Economic growth and sustainability can go hand in hand – in fact good management aimed at biodiversity brings tangible rewards, particularly enhanced tourism,” says Richard Weyl from NIEA. “The wet grassland restoration work at Lough Beg is for everyone living in, working in and visiting this area. We’re fostering a balanced approach to using this land in a way that provides food, good water quality, and can support a rich range of wildlife. To do this it is important to manage designated sites like Lough Beg in a way that secures them as our best examples. Working in partnership with others will make this happen effectively and we are delighted to be working with the RSPB and local farmers in this way.”
With ecotourism on the rise, wetlands are becoming places people wish to discover. “Lough Beg is a haven for birds and brilliant destination for anyone keen to see them. It also is an opportunity for visitors to see a landscape that was once common in Northern Ireland but is sadly increasingly rare,” said RSPB Volunteer Margaret Quinn who lets out a holiday cottage overlooking the wetland.
Seamus Burns added, “We’re looking forward to the restoration and expansion of this habitat and also to the diversity of life it can support. Our long term aim is to create a thriving, vibrant, beautiful place we can all be proud of.”
Rebuilding the Countryside is funded by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA). Partners working with the RSPB and NIEA at Lough Beg include Biffaward, local landowners, and the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (Rivers Agency / Countryside Management Unit).
Notes
1. This date in 1971 marked the adoption of the International Convention on Wetlands in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the Caspian Sea. Over 120 countries have engaged in WWD events of all types: children’s art contests, sampan races, community cleanups, seminars, national programmes, media events.