Plays, Talks and Ancestors!

There are a lot of events coming up in the next few weeks, and your support as always will be greatly valued. On Monday 9th November, Thurles Drama Group will be opening a run at the Source of its new show ‘Flying Feathers’ by Derek Benfield, which promises to be a great evening of comedy. Very generously the Drama Group and the Source have offered the opening night to Cabragh Wetlands as a Benefit Night and fundraising event (though with that title, a conservation charity does seem the right choice!). Please get your tickets and come along to a cheese and wine reception at the Source at 7.30pm, with the curtain due to rise at 8.15. We look forward to seeing you there. http://www.thesourceartscentre.ie/whats_on/view_event.php?Event_ID=331

The Friday before that (November 6th) An Taisce is hosting an evening on Climate Change at the Convent Hall in Nenagh, starting at 8.00pm. The speakers will be Eanna ni Lamnhna and Jon Sweeney. Eanna’s abilities as an inspirational speaker are second to none, while Jon Sweeney has a great reputation as a man who can get across the growing urgency of the climate crisis and also clarify the key scientific detail that can be so confusing to the average non-scientist. There is likely to be no more pressing issue than this over the next century, so don’t miss this opportunity to improve your understanding of what is inevitably a complex issue.

While one crisis forces us to look ahead, it is no bad thing to look back and see what was going on in previous centuries at Cabragh Wetlands. Many thanks to our local history correspondent for researching the following material. From the many archaeological sites close to Cabragh Wetlands it seems that the marsh itself had a lot to offer the people of former times. Between Cabragh Castle and Holycross Abbey the bend of the river Suir encloses the wetlands, with higher ground found on its western edges. There are at least ten prehistoric sites on the Record of Monuments and Places (RMP) Maps. If we travel a little further south to Graiguenoe the ring barrows there suggest that late Bronze Age people lived in the area some 3000 years ago. The most obvious sites on the western fringes of the wetlands are the ring forts and some moated sites.

A ring fort is a Celtic (500BC) farmstead. It is a circular area enclosed by an earthen bank. The material for this bank was thrown up from inside thus creating a fosse. Inside the flat area different types of buildings were constructed; these would probably have been thatched circular structures with wattle and daub or sod walls. On the bank outside a strong fence of stakes would give security from wild animals or enemies. Usually one family occupied the fort, and when the group grew too big another fort would be constructed close by.

How did the Celtic people use the wetlands? The most obvious use was the natural protection the marsh and the river afforded them. They also used the wetlands and river for food. They probably fished and killed wild animals that came to drink, including deer and wild boar. They more than likely enjoyed the meat of wild duck and geese. The presence of a fullacht fia close to the wetlands gives evidence of communal cooking. We can only speculate on the uses they made of the marsh. The archaeological sites show us that people lived here since the Bronze Age. The secrets of these beautiful landscapes features await excavations by future generations. It’s our duty in the meantime to value them as part of our rich heritage, and also to think about how our ancestors lived in balance with their local environment for many millenia. We have much to learn from them.

Apologies!

Due to unforseen circumstances the lecture on Tuesday 27th October on garden birds has been cancelled. However it will be rescheduled at a later date. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Winter Lecture Series and Chief Seattle

Cabragh Wetlands Trust is beginning its series of Winter Talks, with a popular event next Tuesday (27th October) when well-known local naturalist Tom Gallagher will talk at 8.00pm on “Garden Birds and how to attract them”. This is a wonderful event for the whole family to attend, and will give you plenty of ideas about how to get more of our feathered friends into your gardens. Entry is free, as is a restorative cup of tea.





In an inspiring testament written in the mid-1850s the Native American Chief Seattle described people as “but a strand in the web of life”. In our time we are returning to this realization and learning to appreciate the world about us in a whole new way.



So much of what Chief Seattle intuitively understood, we now know to be true. Science has since confirmed that all of life is indeed related and springs from from one unbroken source. In this year of Darwin’s anniversary, we are surely in a position to understand better than any previous generation where man came from and what is his true place in the spectrum of life. We are able to join the indigenous wisdom of our ancestors and “undeveloped” people like Seattle, to the hard science of the anthropologists who painstakingly piece together bone fragments to demonstrate ever more clearly the stages by which modern man emerged.



For 30 years we have read about Lucy, over 3 million years old and ancestor of just about everyone on the planet. Now the scientists have come up with Ardi, from east Africa as well, but 100,000 generations before Lucy; 4.8 million years old, but bi-pedal (walking on two legs) like us today. The bone record is getting ever closer to identifying that famous missing link, the common ancestor of both humans and the great apes like chimpanzees and gorillas.



As a species modern man emerged from Africa about 80,000 years ago. A small band of people searching for food, pushed out into the Middle East. Over the millennia our ancestors spread around the world and increased in number. As a species we have been extremely successful, with almost seven billion people now occupying every habitable corner of the globe.



Over time many cultures and languages emerged offering amazing diversity and color. Each landscape and environment evokes its own particular flowering of the human spirit in response. We may have developed cultural and physical differences, but we are one people, all sharing common ancestors.



We exist and flourish within the context of the web of life on which we depend. We wouldn't draw our next breath but for the trees taking in our carbon dioxide and giving us life sustaining oxygen. Our food would not grow but for the earth worms, the billions of micro-organisms in the soil creating the conditions for the seed to germinate and grow.



Seattle recognized that we are entirely dependent on the interconnection of all life, that we are but a strand in a web of life. Like links in a chain, the web works because it all works together. Each piece of the web has a role to play for life to flourish. As a species humans are as dependant on the web as every other species. Damage the web, and we endanger all life, including ultimately ourselves.



The web of life is made up of many different life forms, from micro-organisms in the soil to the Blue Whale in the oceans, yet it is one community of life, and we are part of this amazing, complex, yet intimate community. Everything is related to everything else, even if you have to go back a billion generations to find the connection. At last even the politicians are waking up to these self-evident truths, with dire warnings about the consequences of failure at the Copenhagen climate talks in December. The web is under real and immediate threat.



At Cabragh Wetlands we are working to protect the children, the children of all species, so this wonderful web of life can remain healthy and sustainable for the foreseeable future.

Rarities at Cabragh

Since Cabragh Wetlands Trust began managing their original 14 acres of the marsh in the early 1990’s, there have been many unusual feathered visitors to the area. Birds like the barn owl, lapwing and lark feed and breed in the vicinity. These are scarce but not as uncommon as a bird like the bittern, which is very rare on these islands. There was some excitement ten years or more ago when word went out that one had been sighted in the reed bed next to the hide. It has not bred in Ireland since the nineteenth century due to the drainage of its natural habitat, like marshes. It is a secretive bird that inhabits big reed beds. Its plumage is golden brown, streaked with dark brown and yellow and is known as An Bonnán Buí in Irish.

In former times it bred in all four provinces and was prized by the gentry for its meat. The simple country folk would have nothing to do with the bittern, because its weird booming call was a “portent of some sad event”. It inspired writers and poets. The famous Irish poem ‘An Bonnan Bui’ by Cathal Bui Mac Ghiolla Ghunna refers to ‘the yellow Bittern’ that had died of thirst in frosty weather. The poet himself feared the same fate for want of a drop!

A more frequent visitor to the wetlands has been the Marsh Harrier. Individuals, usually females, have visited the reed beds three or four times in the last decade. The beautiful bird has a 4 foot wingspan. Its golden head and front wing edges contrast with its dark brown plumage. It has been seen gliding slowly over the tops of the reeds, then hovering slightly before it pounced on its prey - usually aquatic birds or small mammals. This bird, like the bittern, has specific habitat requirements. With the drainage of Wetlands in the 19th century, the bird’s fate was sealed. They no longer breed here.

Other rare or scarce duck species, geese and swans have been sighted at Cabragh. These include a skua, american teal, a white footed goose (eastern race) and a Bewick’s swan. The latter had a numbered neck collar, which allowed it to be traced across Europe as it returned to its breeding grounds in Siberia. Even rare and endangered species seem to view Cabragh Wetlands as a place with potential! “An rud is annamh is iontach.”

Grow your own food!

In this week’s Sunday Times, Mark Keenan in his Plot 34 column makes telling arguments about the decline of the Irish food-producing industry, with ever-increasing reliance on imported food, the security of which can hardly be taken for granted in the troubled world of today. Climate change, oil crises, financial collapse, supermarket domination and the vicissitudes of world markets all contribute to a very uncertain supply chain for our food, and thus for our very survival. Keenan argues that for the first time in 500 generations, the knowledge of how to grow our own food is not being systematically passed down by adults to children, and that most children are not growing up watching and learning as their dad or granddad works the soil, plants seeds and produces food for the family table.



We all bemoan the rain and lack of real heat in our weather, but we have the most wonderful climate for growing and it is surely a nonsense that farmers, whose industry is more important than any, are being forced out of business, in part because of the low prices they receive. The connection to nature is not being adequately made in our children’s daily lives, and schools will struggle to fill the gap if there is such a strong cultural negation of the importance of the natural world, of our agricultural heritage and of horticultural knowledge and skills. These are things of such overwhelming importance that they should be part of our folk-memory, of our indigenous wisdom, transmitted from generation to generation as part of our daily lives. Without them, we become dependent on others, dependent on chance, helpless in adversity and unable to provide sustenance for our families.



A recent report said that to continue in our current lifestyles, the planet will have to produce as much food in the next fifty years as it has in the last 10,000. Can we even begin to manage such a task unless we all take more responsibility for growing our own? And that means understanding the soil and maintaining its health and productivity.



Cabragh Wetlands Trust is of course doing its bit to get children (and adult visitors) to think more deeply about such issues and to foster better understanding of both our local habitats and global environmental issues. As a new development we are working with our friends at Pallas Hill Open Farm at the Ragg, a family farm with a variety of animals for visitors to see, plus information on wildlife, and a museum and display of horse-drawn machinery, which helps us to understand our farming heritage and the central role of agriculture and food production in the lives of all our ancestors until perhaps the last two generations. We are hoping that some schools might like to spend a full day in the area, perhaps spending the morning at Cabragh and the afternoon at Pallas Hill. This would make a great day out of the classroom, and we hope some schools from further away might make the journey for a field study outing in the beautiful countryside of North Tipp. Contact either Ella at Pallas Hill (0504-54294) or Michael at Cabragh (0504-43879).

Tidy Towns!

It was very pleasing to read in last week’s Star about the success of Holycross in the Tidy Towns Competition. Sited on the fringes of Holycross Parish, Cabragh Wetlands Trust was delighted to hear of the well-earned success of our friends on the local Tidy Towns committee. Not surprisingly there is some overlap in the membership of the two organizations, and like any small community, the hard voluntary effort of busy men and women is absolutely priceless.

Readers of this column will remember our concerns about too much emphasis on tidiness, which can so often be destructive of habitat and biodiversity, so it was very good to see that the adjudicators placed great emphasis on wildlife and natural amenities, with plenty of practical suggestions about landscaping and preservation of natural habitats along the river frontage, and a strong comment about planting native species that will enhance the food chain. These are tips that we can all apply in our own gardens.

Think carefully though before you act on one piece of advice from the adjudicators: “Do remove the two dead trees”. In the case of Holycross’s river frontage, this is no doubt very sound advice, and if dead trees are unsafe then they will have to come down, but cutting them down and “removing” them are very different. So pause for a moment before you swing the axe or start up the chainsaw. Dead trees are a vital part of many ecosystems, and a key player in the development of our natural heritage. A dead tree left to decay naturally on the ground can be a wonderful source of wildlife, providing shelter for small mammals, a home for countless insects, and a superb environment for new plants to grow. As the tree breaks down over the years, so it will enrich the soil into which it is decaying, becoming a wonderfully rich medium in which new life can flourish.

Out of death new life springs. It has always been thus. The death of trees and other plants has largely created the life in our landscape, determining a specific local chemical balance which influences which species will flourish in the area. Soil is dead plants; death creates life. Dead trees created our heritage.

So perhaps those two trees have to come down, but may be they could be left in a quiet corner as a log pile in which hedgehogs can shelter, beetles and a myriad of other insects flourish, fungi grow, birds feed, small mammals hunt. Worms will turn the logs into good soil, badgers will root and life will go on. And children will come and turn over the logs, see new sights and learn about the non-human creatures with whom we share this extraordinary planet. And perhaps, if we are lucky, they will grow up to mange it better than we have done.