Extremely interesting discussion/debate around what's going on in our national parks. In short: some good stuff (but not nearly enough), and still a lot of bad stuff. As Pádraic outlined, a huge part of the problem remains a lack of management plans and statutory legislation for the role of NPs.

This is one of my favourite photos taken on banks of Loch Lomond x

On the left, goldenrod growing as an epiphyte on an oak in my place. This is rainforest.

The TFFF is the biggest and boldest plan yet to staunch the loss of tropical forests that are a pillar of climate stability. Its success depends on buy-in from governments and financial institutions that until now have directed their funds towards destruction. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Heavy shower incoming.

There's over 150,000 empty houses across the country. Easy to blame people seeking asylum to avoid the fact that FF have been in government, more or less, for the entire history of the state

This week's column is on Billionaire Brain: the condition which seems to prevent extremely rich people from perceiving the utterly bleeding obvious. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I am a patient in St.James’s, Dublin Chainsaws are cutting an Alder tree It has survived 30yrs at least I went out to stop it but had to leave. I am distraught. It grew straight to get some light. Why do this. DH

A real pleasure and privilege yesterday to participate in the Irish Landscape Architect Institute's conference in Dublin, along with Seán McCormack, @philipb-h.bsky.social, @unamullally.bsky.social, and others.

Wonderfully wet and wild. Make up all the bug hotels and bird boxes you want, but without way more healthy wild natural habitats like this, nature will continue to crash. Rewilding is how we make that happen.

Your regular reminder that by throwing away nature, we throw away *everything*.

We're told one of these land uses is 'productive', while the other is not. But in terms of photosynthetic levels, as well as the production of clean air, water, no flooding, a stable climate, etc, etc, the natural ecosystem wins hands down. As for biodiversity, let's not even go there.

Will add that, though the study below deals specifically with megafauna’s role in regulating earth’s systems, biologists have told much the same story about the loss of diadromous fish, critical transporters of nutrients whose movements and populations modernity has thrown terribly out of whack.

Very true. As @katharinehayhoe.com says, climate change is a crisis amplifier. We should be addressing the amplifier as well as the crises it amplifies.

People who hate Zohran and everything he stands for: Now that Zohran has won, the most effective thing he can do is betray all of his principles

The Kilkenny woodpeckers are getting it on.

True

Roughly 75 percent of the drop in rainfall can be directly linked to deforestation And a drier Amazon is burning like never before They have killed the Amazon - one of the lungs of the Earth www.conservation.org/news/news-sp...

1. The approach of mainstream Democrats is summed up in this astonishing February advice from the Democratic strategist James Carville: “Roll over and play dead. Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.” www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/o... 🧵

Irony alert..🙄

Records of great spotted woodpecker, extinct in Ireland for centuries, but which reintroduced itself naturally to the east coast and has been moving west ever since. Still waiting for them to make it down to my place in Beara, but looks like it's only a matter of time! Nature CAN come back!!

Remember: 'rural' = 'farmers', while 'farmers' = 'big dairy'. Nobody else counts.

Who are these people telling us it's 'pro-rural' to be in favour of being allowed to keep on turning our rivers and lakes into stinking, dying, open sewers for private profit? Oh, just a Fianna Fáil MEP. share.google/tBQc70fFRQIW...

I’m Jewish. I lived in New York for a decade. I am very, very concerned about antisemitism. I have no doubt that Zohran Mamdani would fight to protect my life and my rights. I have no doubt the ADL has entirely failed to protect me and my family from fascists. I know where my allegiance lies.

"Intensive dairying is only wildly profitable as long as the sector is allowed a free ride to produce massive pollution impacts" The principle that the polluter should pay has long been central to environmental regulation but does not apply to dairy farming www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

There's no foraging or other purely extractive activities in my place whatsoever: all fungi, nuts, berries, dead wood, etc., are left for nature. At least *some* places need to be off-limits to human exploitation.

I've never been to Galicia, but around 80% of Ireland was naturally wooded. Without overgrazing - mainly by sheep, but also cattle, feral goats, and deer - much of the land would revert to that state, yes.

Ireland too!!!

Plant crops require far less land than animals. If we replaced all meat protein with soy protein, we would need less soy than is currently grown. Eating less meat would free up land for nature.

Call it Poultry Flu. Or maybe Chicken Flu, since that's the main source. In the early 2000s, you could track how outbreaks in successive Asian countries followed the opening of intensive chicken farms & the transport of crates of day-old chicks across borders.

1. In the wake on Mamdani’s win, we’ll see a lot more far right anti-urban sentiment. Here’s a thread on its roots and evolution. The idea that the city is evil and corrupt, and the countryside innocent and pure, goes back a long way: to Theocritus in Alexandria, and to the Old Testament. 🧵

BRILLIANT NEWS!! ‘Trump’s worst nightmare’ Zohran Mamdani celebrates historic election victory share.google/OSp5gIVFJAC9...

Bird flu is being painted as a problem wild birds are inflicting on the poultry industry, but it's precisely the reverse. Where do they think it developed in the first place, if not in the disease incubators that are mass battery farms? share.google/K4FBGkiuuUdc...

Clouded funnel on yesterday's rainy rainforest floor. Saprotrophic, it breaks down fallen leaves and feeds their nutrients and energy back into the ecosystem. It's part of a true circular economy.

‘There is not a shred of rationality in destroying our planet, in continuing with an economic system that exhausts us, in going along with a political system that fails us every day. We have the minds to be rational. We can decide to end the war against ourselves.’ #photography #nature #resist

Hilarious!! share.google/CRgwM5eTbktE...

Catastrophic nature loss is at least as serious a problem as climate breakdown, but only gets a fraction of the (woefully inadequate) attention. THE most critical tasks of our time are: • Protect what remains of wild ecosystems • Mass rewilding where damaged or lost www.earth.com/news/africas...

The Indigenous Pakayaku in Ecuador’s Amazon have kept mining, logging & oil out of their community's forests for generations @mongabay.com's reporter visited to meet their 45 women warriors who patrol 99,000 acres of rainforest to detect incursions Few have been allowed to witness this until now:

Dick Cheney was a mass murderer and a war criminal, who should have been tried in the Hague and put away for life. That HE said there has never been "a greater threat to our republic [the US] than Donald Trump" speaks volumes about how dire the situation is. share.google/FQIvAYBKFjlf...

Partly because so many formerly leftwing parties have turned to the right, there's a lot of confusion about what right and left mean in politics. I hope this helps: The right defends economic power. The left resists economic power.

And how much of THAT comes from RUSSIAN fossil fuel interests?

It's easy to take autumn's colours for granted. But across much of the world, there's no such seasonal leaf fall: eg in the tropics, or where conifers hold sway in the north. Another of the things that make our natural forests so incredibly special.

You cant eat biofuels either - 240,000 hectares of British farmland are growing them. Far, far in excess of solar footprint.

bring back shame

Always follow the money and never, ever think that Farage is on your side. He isn't.

“Recent research has shown that wind energy alone has reduced British energy costs by at least £104 billion.” So one can only assume that that kind of money was making some people very rich indeed & maybe that’s why they’re against renewables 🤔

92%: the percentage of funding for Nigel Farage's far-right political party Reform UK that comes from fossil fuel interests. Across the world, anyone blaming immigrants, etc, it's all just a smokescreen to allow the rich to keep on getting richer by killing our planet. share.google/W2gwfc0XVpUy...