The first documented attempt by white–tailed sea eagles to breed in Ireland for the first time in 100 years has failed.

And, in a double blow for the sea eagle reintroduction programme, the remains have been found in Mayo of a young male eagle released in Kerry two years ago.

Preliminary toxicology tests of the remains, found on a small island on Lough Beltra near Castlebar, have not yet determined whether the rare bird was shot at or poisoned.

Allan Mee, project manager of programme, said the failed breeding attempt, in Co Clare, by a pair of young sea eagles was “disappointing and bit of a shock as the two were doing really well”.

The birds had been sitting on their eggs since Apr 9 and chicks were expected to hatch any day, he said. 

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Some ideas are so self–evident they barely require explanation. One such concept is that of nature reserves. Most countries have them and today they cover more than 13% of the world’s land area. But 100 years ago things were different. There were very few nature reserves of any kind, and in the face of an onslaught unleashed by modern farming and industry natural areas rich in wildlife were disappearing fast. This was especially the case in industrialised countries such as Great Britain. One person who decided to act to stem the decline was Charles Rothschild. A member of the famous banking family, his passion was for nature and on working out where the best places for wildlife remained, and then getting them protected.

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Investing billions in new nuclear power stations would have forced a credit–rating downgrade on energy giant RWE, the company’s chief executive has revealed. The head of another big six energy company, E.ON, blamed the abandonment of its nuclear plans on a lack of “financial firepower”. Tuesday’s developments are the latest to demonstrate that the huge cost and decades–long payback times of new nuclear power stations are making them difficult to fund in the current economic crisis. RWE and E.ON cancelled their joint plan to build new reactors in March, while nuclear giant EDF has delayed work at its site at Hinkley and EDF’s nuclear partner Centrica says the case for nuclear investment is “unproven”.

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Wildlife populations around the world have declined by 30% in the past four decades in the face of record over–consumption of natural resources, a report has warned. The examination of how more than 9,000 populations of mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians and fish are faring reveal a planet in crisis, with serious implications for human health, wealth and well–being, conservationists said. Freshwater creatures in the tropics have seen the worst declines, of around 70%, while tropical species as a whole have seen populations tumble by 60% since 1970. In Asia, tiger numbers have fallen 70% in just 30 years.

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THE Irish biofuels industry died on Jan 1, 2011 when a government tax relief scheme designed to foster the sector was replaced with one which has completely failed to do so. As a result, almost all of the country’s bioethanol, biodiesel, and oil–crushing plants were switched off.
Tom Bruton, president of the Irish Bioenergy Association (IrBEA) says in all, eight facilities built between 2005 and 2008 — often with grant aid — were shut down just over 16 months ago.

“There were people employed by these companies that had to be let go,” he says.

“There were people manning the production systems and people delivering the fuel that aren’t working any more.”

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OPPONENTS OF a wind farm project have called for a national review of wind farm development which they describe as the “new construction boom”.
“Along with ghost estates, we are going to have ghost wind farms due to oversupply of targets, if and when subsidies end,” Cavan based environmentalist Peter Crossan has warned.
Mr Crossan, part–time farmer and former chairman of the Irish Wind Energy Truth Alliance, and northeast GP Dr Kevin Deering, have lodged an appeal to permission for a wind farm approved for Knockranny, Moycullen, Co Galway, on the Connemara border.
The project, approved last year by Galway County Council, involves 14 turbines each of 140m (460ft) in height within one kilometre of seven houses.

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Somehow the Agriculture and Marine Minister nearly always favours big, over small and more environment–friendly, interests. 

On land Coveney, who is Minister for Agriculture, Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, plans to increase agricultural exports by 42% by 2020. On sea, he is planning three mega fish–farms. The first, in Galway Bay, will produce 15,000 tons a year, more than the whole of Ireland’s current production. 

Coveney is concerned that changes to CAP will mean the “most productive farmers at present would lose an average of 60% of their payment while farmers in less productive areas would gain an average of approximately 85%” 

Simon Coveney is fighting the European Commission on both fronts, assisted by twelve (sometime conflicting) State Bodies, including Coillte, the Aquaculture Licensing Appeals Board (ALAB),Bord Bia. Bord Iascaigh Mhara, the Marine Institute, the National Milk Agency, the Sea Fisheries Protection Authority (SFPA), and Teagasc.
On land and on sea, his ambition is global. 

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COMMON HOUSEHOLD chemicals could be causing a range of human ailments from reduced fertility to obesity and cancer, the European Environment Agency has warned.
There was strong evidence of harm being caused to wildlife species from the discharge of household chemicals, pharmaceuticals and pesticides, the agency said yesterday on the release of a new study on the issue.
It launched the Weybridge +15 Report (1996–2100) yesterday at Brunel University in Britain. The study represents the results from an international workshop that evaluated the last 15 years of research into “endocrine disruptors”.

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Ireland can play a key role in the renegotiation of the Common Fisheries Policy, which some nations want to alter to reverse the effects of decades of overfishing, writes Europe Correspondent Ann Cahill.

‘IT WOULD have been better to burn the billions of euro the EU has spent on fisheries over the past four decades,” according to Ocean2012, which represents dozens of NGOs, including fishermen and environmentalists.

Ocean2012 blames the European Fish Policy for the fact that two thirds of fish stocks are overfished, that only eight of the 136 most valuable species will be safe, and that, despite massive subsidies, one third of the sector is operating at a loss.

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Faced with increasing political obstacles to oil and natural gas exploration in many countries around the world, the oil industry is focusing again on the United States. The industry is using the deceitful promise of energy independence to cajole Americans and their policymakers into relaxing environmental regulations and opening protected public lands and restricted offshore areas to drilling. The oil and gas industry would like you to believe that American energy independence is just around the corner. The question is, why do they want you to believe it now? After all, if energy independence were that easy to deliver, the industry would have done it a long time ago. Why has the industry chosen now, in particular, to begin a campaign of deceit to push the false promise of American energy independence?

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What do the terms “marine reserve” and “marine–protected area” conjure up for you? Places in which, perhaps, wildlife is protected? In which the damaging activities permitted in other parts of the sea – such as trawling and dredging – are banned? Wrong. A marine–protected area in the United Kingdom is an area inside a line drawn on a map – and that’s about it. In most cases, the fishing industry can continue to rip up the seabed, overharvest the fish and shellfish, and cause all the other kinds of damage it is permitted to inflict in the rest of this country’s territorial waters. With three tiny exceptions, our marine reserves are nothing but paper parks.

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In the cool, salty air of the Norwegian coast, a revolution in reverse is being attempted. Here, amid a mare’s nest of gleaming steel pipes and flaming yellow gas flares, engineers are aiming to put back under the ground what many nations have exerted all their might for the last century to get out: carbon. If all goes to plan, the oil refinery and gas power plant at Mongstad will have millions of tonnes of its climate–warming carbon dioxide funnelled back under the North Sea. And there are plans aplenty around the world for carbon capture and storage (CCS). They carry racy names such as Goldeneye and Gorgon, promise to even suck greenhouse gases out of the air one day, and are laced with the delicious irony of having been kickstarted by climate sceptic US president George W Bush, who wanted to “do something for coal“.

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MORE THAN 100 of Dublin’s most historic buildings are falling into dereliction because of cuts in Government funding which have left Dublin City Council unable to protect them.
Government grants allowed the council to carry out emergency repairs to just one protected structure in 2011 and the council said it would be able to save a maximum of two in 2012.
One of the council’s most senior officials has described the Government’s funding for endangered historic buildings as “minuscule” and said Dublin was being treated in the same way as Leitrim, despite having far more protected structures.
Until 2010 local authorities operated the National Conservation Grants scheme under which owners of protected structures could get funding of up to € 25,000 for building conservation.

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Archeologists have uncovered evidence of pre–farming people living in the Burren more than 6,000 years ago — one of the oldest habitations ever unearthed in Ireland.
Radiocarbon dating of a shellfish midden on Fanore Beach in north Clare have revealed it to be at least 6,000 years old — hundreds of years older than the nearby Poulnabrone dolmen.

The midden — a cooking area where nomad hunter–gatherers boiled or roasted shellfish — contained Stone Age implements, including two axes and a number of smaller stone tools.

Excavation of the site revealed a mysterious black layer of organic material, which archeologists believe may be the results of a Stone Age tsunami which hit the Clare coast, possibly wiping out the people who used the midden.

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More than 11,000 landowners risk losing disadvantaged area payments, because their stocking density was less than 0.3 livestock units (LU) per forage hectare in 2011.
They will be written to by the Department of Agriculture and given the opportunity to apply for a derogation if, for example, their participation in agri–environmental measures resulted in stocking density less than 0.3 LUs.

Most of those with less than 0.3 LUs in 2011 were in counties Donegal (2,179); Mayo (1,996); Galway (1,556); and Kerry (1,254). In other Munster counties, they numbered 586 in Cork, 435 in Clare, 235 in Tipperary, 171 in Limerick, and 84 in Waterford.

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Just for a moment, forget whether you’re pro–nuclear or anti–nuclear, and reflect on the coalition government’s policy for nuclear power. It wants to see 10 new reactors built over the next few years. It sees this as a critical part of its carbon management strategy, and absolutely necessary to help “keep the lights on”. It believes it will strengthen the UK’s energy security at a time when North Sea oil and gas continues to decline. It is working closely with a wide range of energy companies to help deliver the 10 new reactors. That’s the plan. Some think it’s great; some don’t much like it, but see it as a necessary part of addressing accelerating climate change; some think it is seriously misguided. It doesn’t really matter what you think: it cannot possibly deliver – primarily for economic reasons.

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The government has approved plans for the largest onshore windfarm in England and Wales. With 76 turbines, the Pen Y Cymoedd development is expected to produce 299 megawatts (MW) of energy by 2016, enough to power 206,000 homes a year.

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The Government has hit back at critics of onshore wind power, releasing a report which showed the industry created thousands of jobs and generated millions of pounds for the economy. The joint study of 18 wind farms across the country by the industry and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) showed communities benefited from onshore wind turbines to the tune of £84 million in 2011, with 1,100 local jobs supported by the sector. One in three local jobs were in operating and maintaining the turbines, providing long term employment.

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A Norwegian fish farming company is seeking to develop a closed container fish farm at buildings which were previously used for the processing of mussels in Bantry, West Cork.

Niri AS, trading as Niri Seafood, want to develop the farm 800m southwest of Reen Point at a site developed for mussel farming.

They hope to develop 3,300 tonnes of salmon from the site, including salmon smolt production.

There has been sharp opposition in Bantry recently to plans to develop a 12–14 cage €3.5m organic salmon fish farm at waters near Traflask in Adrigole.

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Bord Pleanála says scheme is in line with spatial strategy
AN BORD Pleanála has ruled that the first phase of an enormous Chinese trading hub on the edge of Athlone, Co Westmeath, would be “in accordance with the proper planning and sustainable development of the area”.
The four board members unanimously granted permission for the proposed development by Athlone Business Park Ltd on the basis that it would be in line with the National Spatial Strategy (NSS) regional planning guidelines and a local area plan for Creggan.
In their decision, the board members noted that Athlone – along with Mullingar and Tullamore – was designated as a midlands “gateway” in the NSS, while the regional planning guidelines envisaged international trading as a desirable form of development.

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