Annual General Meeting

It’s coming up to AGM time at the Cabragh Wetlands. As always the Annual General Meeting will be held on the first Tuesday in May – May 6th at 8.30 pm at the Visitors’ Centre. It is very important that members come along to review the progress made by the Trust, elect officers and give input into the direction that the organization is taking.

Main developments have taken place in the education programme, with nearly a thousand children spending a few hours in the field in 2007, learning and reflecting on key issues of habitat, species conservation and man’s relationship with the natural world. There are major issues to consider about how this programme can be sustained and perhaps developed at secondary and third levels.

On the recreation front, more groups are using the Wetlands for gatherings; traditional music evenings, a gentle outdoor experience for people with disabilities, a place for a contemplative walk, an evening birdwatching and recently a group meeting regularly to reflect on environmental issues from a more spiritual angle. We hope to develop a series of creative workshops with local artists, craftsmen and writers.

On the practical side we have had major reports in the last 18 months looking at the role of the Wetlands as an element in the wider national conservation structure, raising issues about our organizational effectiveness, land management and financing. One clear lesson is that we need interested parties to ‘brainstorm’ about our medium-term priorities, such as building extensions, charging for usage and land management.

AGM’s are key moments in the calendar of voluntary organizations. This is a chance for members to hear from the Committee, ask questions, have their say and elect officers. Non-members are welcome to come to the AGM and find out more about this organization that already offers so much to the Thurles area, and could be a key player in the future as environmental issues rise up the public agenda.

With the busy Easter holiday behind us, many of us will be spending more time in the garden, getting it in shape for the summer. Obviously we all want our gardens to look nice, but just as with clothing, colour schemes, shape of cars and so on, what we consider to be ‘looking nice’ is largely a matter of fashion.

We praise our neighbours for their immaculate lawns, weed-free flower beds, symmetrical shrubs and exotic ornamentals. That’s fine, but remember that in nature things are rarely so neat and tidy. Many birds, insects and mammals need the right sort of vegetation for cover, nesting, breeding and feeding. Try to leave some of your garden wild, and think twice before you rip out, or douse with chemical poisons, plants that are so easily dismissed as weeds. One definition of a weed might be that it is a plant that is currently out of fashion.

There is often a crucial symbiotic relationship between one species of insect and one particular plant. Lose the plant and you have potentially destroyed a local insect colony that is already struggling to maintain a foothold in our increasingly artificial man-made environment.

Caterpillars of the peacock and tortoiseshell butterflies need a patch of stinging nettles for food; ragwort supports the black and orange-banded caterpillars of the day-flying cinnabar moth. Hedgehogs love slugs. Poison the slug and you poison the hedgehog, which is a great friend to the gardener, especially if you have an old pile of logs in a corner where it can shelter and hibernate.

Huge flower heads of cow parsley and hogweed are south for nectar by beetles and flies, which themselves help clear the excrement and bodies if dead insects, thus releasing nutrients as food for plants, and help to pollinate by transferring pollen.

Come out to the Cabragh Wetlands and see how if left ‘untidy’, nature creates beauty and biodiversity in abundance.