Electric cars and climate change

Incentives

The controversy sparked by Prime Minister Sunak's recent announcement of a change in the U.K.'s policy on petrol-fuelled vehicles reminds me of our family decision 3-4 years ago to think about buying an electric car.

Aware of the compromise option of a hybrid car, we started from the mindset of going green fully rather than considering a vehicle which still uses fossil fuel.  If and when we go green, we will go green.  Consequently, just before Covid arrived on these shores, my attention was grabbed by an enticing incentive to buy an all-electric car and I decided to make an inquiry.  As a driver of a 2006 VW Golf turbo diesel, a twin financial offer that could have saved me £9,000 seemed too good to miss, combining a mix of economic and environmental sense.  

Part one was a scrappage scheme carrying a grant of £4000 to trade in the ageing diesel; part two was a £5000 government grant to subsidise my potential trade-in to a brand new VW electric vehicle, an EV in the new lingo.  I remember visiting my nearest dealership for a briefing along with all the seductively alluring sales talk.  As the retailer had taken no delivery of the new EVs at that early stage, I went home to consider what to do, including saving up. 

Following the science

My interest in the new VW EV had been stimulated not just by the financial incentive as much as my wish to heed the scientific evidence about the detrimental impacts of fossil fuels on nature and on public health.  I saw it as a responsible reaction to Government incentives for developing our strategy on the issue of climate change, almost like a civic duty, allowing us citizens to reduce our individual carbon footprints.  

Still interested, we subsequently chose to postpone a decision on purchase of an EV to allow the technology more time to improve.  Our thinking was that assuming Government continues to regard climate change as an emergency that warrants urgent action, we had every reason to be confident of its incentives remaining in place, maybe even improving.

Austere policy returns

With the onset of Covid and subsequent passage of time, the so-called carrots of policy in the form of grants and other financial incentives have gradually disappeared, withdrawn by the public authorities for whatever reasons.  As recently as April this year, for example, the availability of no-cost charging points offering free electricity and located in places such as public car parks was withdrawn.  The use of electricity from surviving charging points must instead be paid for by the EV owner.  Likewise grants to help households to instal charging points at home have also been withdrawn. 

Party politics

Perhaps negative emotions of disappointment and disgruntlement are the incorrect reaction to the removal of incentives aimed at promoting sustainable transport and EV sales.  We should know from experience of living here that changing environmental policy has happened before.  

As soon as David Cameron became leader of the Conservatives, for instance, one of his headline actions was to proudly pin his green credentials to the Party's mast.  He inserted a symbolic oak tree as the Party's logo, where it has remained in various iterations a decade and a half further on.  His reforming environmental zeal, however, was subsequently exposed (1) with his now infamous instruction to officials "to cut the green crap." 

Now, post-Brexit, not to mention the exits of three other Prime Ministers, after Covid19, a cost of living crisis, and with Russia's invasion of Ukraine continuing the incumbent PM has stimulated debate and not a little argument by announcing the latest u-turn on environmental policies.  Of these the most prominent change is the decision to postpone the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035.

The Times cartoonist Peter Brookes (23 09 23) pillories PM Sunak's about-turn

Some commentators remind us that this new stance reflects, in part at least, the unexpected retention of the Conservative Party's Parliamentary seat in Uxbridge in June against the odds.  To the pleasant surprise of Party strategists, a famous victory was achieved because of unpopularity among Conservative voters of the Labour Party Mayor of London's environmental plan to extend ULEZ, inner London's Ultra Low Emission Zone (an initiative of the predecessor Conservative Mayor), across greater London.  Under this calculation the by-election result gives the PM some kind of a mandate for appealing to voters by "reducing the burden" of environmental restrictions.

Infrastructural failing

On the other hand, the current discourse sits on top of growing criticism especially in recent months from current and prospective EV car owners about the U.K's inadequate supply of charging point infrastructure right across the country compared to our neighbours in Europe.  This infrastructural failing is regarded as a major disincentive to the growth in trade in EVs.  

A recent BBC documentary quantifies the undersupply both in GB and in Northern Ireland (2) relative to Europe.  The programme's datasets illustrate that a bad situation across England Scotland and Wales, for example, is almost three times worse in Northern Ireland. 

 

One comment in an otherwise informative account was the claim by Emissions Analytics that "electric vehicles are not a cure-all for our environmental problems."  No EV driver would ever make such a hyperbolic claim.  If anything, the logical position is that EVs are a significant if small part of a multi-faceted strategy that includes everything from heat pumps to diet in the face of the climate emergency.

My EV

Based on glowing reviews (3) of a particular model which emphasised its battery range and relatively lower price, seventeen weeks after placing the order my new MG4 Trophy EV arrived in Belfast from Nanjing in April this year.  In the absence of infrastructure and financial inducements from our green Government, I was compelled to dig more deeply.

To address the problem of the undersupply of charging points and no more free charging from April, I invested in the installation of a wall-mounted home charger.  And to assist with economising on running costs, I had a new electricity meter installed to access lower cost battery-charging after midnight.

Made in China

Again, it should be unsurprising, but what now appears like another policy reversal, this time on international trade, has been emerging with more regularity in recent times.  Since a Labour Government's promotion of business development with China (including the sale of the British marque of MG to China in 2006) and subsequent promotion by Conservative administrations of Chinese investment in various sectors of the U.K's economy, Britain (followed by the EU) is becoming increasingly critical of China's enthusiastic take-up of the resultant business opportunies.  

Morris Group cars, it should be noted, originate in the English Midlands; the new MG EVs bear little connection to their predecessor models apart from the marque.  

The President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has complained (4) about Chinese-made cars "distorting" EU competition as "global markets are flooded with cheaper Chinese electric cars."  

Objectively speaking, any buyer of an expensive new car wants to get the best quality at the most competitive price.  Westminster's withdrawal of its financial incentives coupled with low investment in charging infrastructure are hindering EV sales in Britain.  The BBC Spotlight documentary presented evidence, for example, from the Netherlands where EV sales and public charging points significantly exceed those in the U.K.  

Who would have thought that English Scottish Welsh and Irish car drivers who want to own a green-striped EV have to rely on Chinese subsidies rather than on the U.K. to reduce their carbon footprint.

IPCC

Ever since the International Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, was established 35 years ago in 1988 by the United Nations and the World Metereological Organisation it has published regular reports warning the world about the impacts of human activity on our planet.  Climatological experts from a wide range of nations provide the empirical evidence, its data-led forecasts becoming more and more alarming in recent years.  

The IPCC's first report back in 1990 revealed that the rise in carbon dioxide levels has pushed Earth's 1990 temperature from 0.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to 1.3 degrees Celsius.  

Environmental calamaties in the form of raging wildfires and apocalyptic floods across the world have claimed too many lives, destroying land and property even taking this year alone.   The tragic signs of disaster have been seen in Australia, Hawaii California and New York, Canada, many places across Europe from the Canary Islands and Portugal through Austria to Greece.  To these add the recent scenes of catastrophic floods in Tunisia destroying dams, reminders to everybody of the urgent dangers of lethargy and inaction.

The signs are on our own doorstep too.  The State of Nature 2023 Report provides a graphic description of the parlous condition of nature and biodiversity across the U.K.  Closer to home the toxic state of the biggest "freshwater" lake in Ireland and Britain, Lough Neagh, is a national embarrassment (5).  

More specifically, the State of Nature report (6) emphasises worrying reductions in wildlife.  In GB it reports that one in six species face extinction, such as the turtle dove and the hazel dormouse.  Northern Ireland, it says, is one of the world's most nature-depleted areas (7) with 12% of species assessed at risk of extinction.  Extinction, no less.

The Report demands "urgent action to slow down biodiversity loss and to try to reverse the damage of recent decades...."  And yet, sacked politicians idle as our enchanted isle's freshwater is overcome by toxic blue-green algae.

It doesn't make any sense at a critical tipping point for nature, in a deteriorating global emergency, for the U.K. with its aspirations to be a global leader and allegedly taking back control of all of its affairs, to row back now on environmental policies.  What sort of signal does that communicate to its own people and to the world at large?

© Michael McSorley 2023

 

References

1. Rowena Mason 21 November 2013 The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/21/david-cameron-green-crap-comments-storm

2. BBC Northern Ireland Spotlight 26 September 2023 "The Electric Road Test" Reporter Conor Spackman

3. Irish Times 30 September 2022 https://www.irishtimes.com/motors/2022/09/30/mg-delivers-its-best-car-in-decades-and-its-priced-to-give-its-rivals-sleepless-nights/

4. Financial Times 13 September 2023 "EU to launch anti-subsidy probe into Chinese electric vehicles https://www.ft.com/content/55ec498d-0959-41ef-8ab9-af06cc45f8e7

5. Irish Times 23 September 2023 Freya McClements "The lough isn't just dying, it's being killed:" The clotted mess choking Lough Neagh

6. BBC News  27 September 2023 "Nature crisis: Ons in six species at risk of extinction in GB"https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66923930

7. Belfast Telegraph 28 September 2023 "Report says Northern Ireland is one of the world's most nature-depleted areas"
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/report-says-northern-ireland-is-one-of-the-worlds-most-nature-depleted-areas/a2031004888.html

Native trees - our heritage

The Tree Council of Ireland published a really helpful poster about the island’s native trees a few years ago.  

It included vivid illustrations of 12 such trees and their leaves alongside tri-lingual names and succinct descriptions in English (1).  Prominently displayed is the Sessile or Irish oak.  Otherwise known as Quercus petraea in Latin, or Dair ghaelach in Irish, its characteristics are described thus by the Tree Council:- 

“The buds of the oak are borne on brownish twigs with three or four terminal buds clustered together.  Catkin flowers are produced in early April and are wind-pollinated.  The characteristic lobed leaves appear soon afterwards.  The sessile, or stalkless, acorns which sit directly on the twigs ripen in autumn.  Height  - up to 37 metres.”   

Interestingly, the poster also shows that only one of the other 11 trees, the Ash (Fraxinus excelsior, Fuinseóg), can exceed that height at 40 metres.

 

For the record, the other ten specimens on the Tree Council’s list are Scots pine, horse chestnut, silver birch, wych elm, alder, wild cherry, yew, rowan, holly and hazel.

 

 

Trees Matter

 

Contemporary anxieties about climate change and about personal health (including loss of knowledge about natural remedies) are increasingly focusing public concern for the state of nature.  

The mid-May week saw the production of another authoritative report, this one from the World Meteorological Organisation warning about a climatic event in the coming months, one that will have far-reaching repercussions for health, food security, water management and the natural environment (2). 

 

To help deal with the threats, the need to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies advocated by bodies like the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Panel on Climate Change assumes more urgency, literally, month by month. 

Acknowledgement of the crucial role of trees, not least their ability to capture carbon, becomes a strategic imperative.  

 

Among the many facts we learned on a recent short course at Queens University Belfast (QUB), for instance, are that forests hold around 45% of the carbon stored on land; that a tree absorbs approx 10-40 kg of CO2 per year depending on species and stage of growth; and that most of the world’s biodiversity is in forests (3).   

That is before even mentioning the physiological, psychological, aesthetic and other health-giving benefits bestowed by trees - while not forgetting the scientific links and priceless clues that trees provide connecting us to our past.

 

Native trees in particular have an added advantage over exotic imported species with a natural ability to attract local wildlife and to promote biodiversity.  Oaks, however, are the most special because they support more life than any other native tree, attracting wildlife and being the most friendly Irish native tree for biodiversity.  

 

According to the Woodland Trust squirrels, jays and badgers love the sessile oak’s acorns; caterpillars flock to eat its leaves; and, uniquely, 326 species of wildlife are found only on oak.

 

The paradox, however, is that today this island, for all its wholesome emerald reputation, has one of Europe’s lowest rates of tree cover.  

According to Coillte (4), Ireland’s figure in 2020 for forest cover is 11% compared to Europe’s average of 33½%.  Less than 2% of Ireland's cover is native woodland.  The plan is to extend cover from 11 to 18% in the coming decades (5).   

 

The Woodland Trust’s comparative rate for the UK in 2021 is 13.2% (6), better but still low.

 

Dinnseanchas (the lore of place names)

 

Expertise that can provide clues about respecting our trees is available from other sources, going back in written records to medieval annals.  These include the dinnseanchas (8), 11th and 12th century manuscripts of Irish literature including poetry and place-names.

The related Irish gaelic word seanchaí translates as a story-teller, in the sense of an old wise person, a reciter of ancient lore, where story-telling was and still is like a national art-form. 

 

One such narrative author, the youthful linguist and folklorist Manchán Magan, takes up the challenge and deals with native trees in his recent best-selling book (7).  

Referring to pre-Christian Ireland, he exemplifies the Irish word bile which means “sacred tree” or “ancient tree.”  Such was the significance of ancient trees to communities that the word bile appears in place-names (e.g. Maigh Bhile or Moville in County Donegal). 

 

As if to demonstrate the connections which trees have to people and communities here, he adds that of the more than 60,000 townlands across Ireland 13,000 are named after native trees.  

They include  

• beith (birch e.g East Tyrone’s enchanting Bronze Age stone circle built over an earlier neolithic site at Beaghmore, meaning a large birchland), 
• iúr (yew e.g. An Iúr Newry),  
• sceach (hawthorn e.g. in Co Tyrone the poetically-named Sceichín an rinnce, little hawthorn of the dancing place), 
• coll (hazel),  
• cuileann (holly) - 
• with the most common tree-name being dair (oak).  

This frequency of use was, he says, because the oak was considered to be the strongest, longest-lived and most venerable of trees.  

 

As Magan puts it, the ancient laws of Ireland (the Brehon Laws) ranked trees in order of nobility, with the oak always at the top of the seven Nobles of the Wood.  

Our forebears respected oak as the most dominant and slowest-growing, invaluable for construction, barrel-coopering, boat-building and furniture.  Its bark, Magan adds, was used for tanning leather and for making black ink and dye. 

We learned on the QUB course that Brehon Laws provided stiff punishment for those who damaged trees. For instance, for branch-cutting of Nobles the penalty was a 1 year old heifer, for fork-cutting a 2 year old heifer, for base-felling a milch cow, and for tree removal 2 and a half milch cows.  

 

I suspect that if there were dinnseanchas awards in today's world, Sessile oak would be declared native tree of the current (or maybe any other) millennium.

 

Another author, linguist and folklorist Niall MacCoitir (9) says that such was the high regard that pre-Christian Ireland had for trees, the creators of the first known Gaelic alphabet Ogham named its letters after trees.  

He shows, for instance, that Irish oak was the seventh consonant of the Ogham alphabet and was the ninth month of the Ogham tree calendar.  

Elsewhere he cites botanist Charles Nelson’s finding that more than 1,600 townlands in Ireland contain the Irish word Doire (single oak or oakwood).  

 

Magan expands on that theme saying that subsequent Christian sites at places like Doire (Derry) or at Cill Dara (Kildare, church of the oak) are likely to have been sites of pagan worship located in woodland before the first timber chapels and stone churches were built.  

The same might apply to Éadan Doire (Edenderry Co Antrim, brow of the oakwood). 

 

In line with his book’s absorbing thesis of attempting (and probably succeeding) to connect mythology to actual archaeological and sacred sites, Magan laments the fact that 

“unfortunately our landscape lacks many of its old trees and its old-forest growth… our forests were felled for shipbuilding, construction and iron smelting.. These old trees were believed to represent transition points between this land and realms beyond; each had a name and would have had guardians to protect it just as a temple or holy well would have today.” 

Trees in Ireland aren’t just sources of firewood or timber for construction.  

Drawing on Niall MacCoitir’s book Magan also concludes that trees were regarded as sacred, imbued with supernatural powers, with oak the most sacred because it is the most practical.

To illustrate and provide a flavour of the folklore of Irish oak trees, consider the following five of many specific examples from MacCoitir’s fascinating research:- 

• a poem in the Dinnshenchas talks about the ancient lore of Samhain (our family-oriented festival of Halloween) being learned in oakwoods from spirits and fairy folk;  
• the most famous oak tree in Irish legend, the Oak of Mugna (Moone in County Kildare) was closely associated with kingship.  The oak was enormous in size, girth and height, bearing three crops a year - acorns, nuts and apples - and there are two poems about it in the Dinnshenchas; 
• Christian sites like Daire Calgaich (Derry) are associated with oak groves which were probably chosen for their pre-Christian significance.  Such was his regard for this oakwood that Colmcillle declared that he was more fearful of the sound of axes in it than he was of death;

• the oak is a symbol of kingship because of its connotations of strength and fertility.  The word oak in Irish also means a chief and the same applies in Welsh.  MacCoitir adds that the Annals of Connaught for AD 1442 describe the children of king Ardgar Mór Mag Mathgamna as "fragrant trees and mighty oaks of bounty" for their generosity in distributing horses and treasure, money to every suppliant; and
• recent excavation at Navan Fort, the ancient site of Emain Macha, found a large oak post in the centre of a massive circular structure, the purpose of which is believed to be primarily ritual. It is thought, MacCoitir says, that the post may have been the focus of ritual activities to the Celtic Jupiter as a sacred symbol of tribal integrity.

 

Best examples of Irish Oak

 

Against this background, could it be that Lagan Valley Regional Park can claim to be the best place on the island to see Irish oak trees in the modern era?   It seems so.

 

This is based on the findings of a survey led by Belfast City Council’s then Forest Officer in collaboration with Queens University (10).  

More particularly, the survey found that Belvoir Forest is home to the oldest recorded oak trees in Ireland.  Many are over 300 years old.  The oldest specimen (1642) pre-dates the Battle of the Boyne by a half-century.  According to the report’s author, Dr Ben Simon, “it is the oldest date so far found for any tree in a woodland in Ireland.” 

 

He adds that the largest of Belvoir’s veteran oaks and known affectionately as Granddad, “is a massive squat hollow tree with a circumference of 8.8 metres just above ground level making it one of the largest oaks in Ireland.” 

 

14 May 2023 Dr Ben Simon at "Granddad" oak, Belvoir Forest Park Belfast

On the recent guided walk (11), I asked him if Granddad is a sessile oak or a common oak.  That, it seems, remains an open question.  

He replied by saying that the survey’s field botanists and geneticists could not agree which of the veteran oaks are Quercus robur (common oak) and which are Quercus petraea (Irish oak).  

His 2005 book (on its page 14) about Belvoir Park (12) made precisely the same point.  

 

Perhaps almost two decades on, one wonders if a follow-up survey and analysis might add value to Dr Simon's initiative, given modern advancements in technology. 

 

It's also encouraging to know, as the Lagan Valley Park Ranger pointed out on last month's walk/talk (10), that the Park's volunteers previously collected 13,000 oak acorns for planting; and that now, 15 years on, new areas of oakland are thriving, much of this in places close to the centre of Belfast.

Never before has humanity had greater need of these native specimens. 

 

O ye mighty oaks. 

  

 

© Michael McSorley 2023

 

 

References

1. www.treecouncil.ie and irishtimes.com/treesofireland
2. RTÉ News George Lee 17 May 2023 https://www.rte.ie/news/environment/2023/0517/1384030-climate-global/
3. Queens University Belfast, School of Open Learning. "Native Trees: their identification and place in society" Roy Nelson. Spring 2023
4. Coillte, Ireland’s State-owned commercial Forestry business.  Oct 2020 report https://www.coillte.ie/a-brief-history-of-irelands-native-woodlands/
5. https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/history-of-forestry-in-ireland/
6. https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/state-of-uk-woods-and-trees/
7. “Listen to the Land Speak” Manchán Magan 2022
8. Dinnseanachas:- https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/Dinnshenchas_%C3%89renn
9. “Ireland’s Trees, myths legends and folklore” Niall MacCoitir 2015 edition
10. Dr Ben Simon “If Trees Could Talk: The Story of Woodlands around Belfast.” 2009
11. “A Walk back in Time” 14 May 2023 and “Treasured Trees” 21 May 2023 Dr BenSimon, Lagan Valley Regional Park Events Programme 2023
12. “A Treasured Landscape the heritage of Belvoir Park” Ben Simon 2005

 

Lagan Valley Regional Park

A New Year’s Walk in the Park

After all the festivities celebrating Yuletide followed by the jollity of marking the end of the year, what better way to start January than a healthy gulp of clean fresh air.  It’s hard to think of a more pleasant place to refresh the lungs than the local park.

Location location location

How lucky are the citizens of southern County Antrim to have a back garden like Lagan Valley Regional Park.  I am fortunate to live within walking distance of one of the park’s principal parts, Belvoir Forest.

Although it is the only part of the UK to have no National Parks, Northern Ireland has this one Regional Park.  At its closest point, it is only a couple of miles from the centre of Belfast. Few other cities can claim to have such an impressive area of open space – 4,200 acres.  

It extends for 11 miles from its inner suburbs to beyond Belfast’s city boundaries[1] all the way to Lisburn.

 

In times of financial austerity, it’s reassuring to remind ourselves that the best things we have are free.  

Lagan Valley has all we need to make us happy.  As a public park, it is the perfect place for running, cycling, walking, canoeing, as well as archaeological discovery, social, cultural and family events.  

The Park has attracted over a million visitors in each of the last three years (more than the Giants Causeway and Titanic Belfast).[2]

It has a rich variety of parklands ranging from dense woodlands to manicured gardens and estates with ancient specimen trees and it supports a wide variety of wildlife.   

Lagan Valley has enormous historic interest, providing a microcosm of the wider region’s development.  

No wonder that it was recognised with the designation as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1965 and as a Regional Park in 1967.

Town planners sagely refer to open spaces as the city’s heart and lungs.  On this basis, the rational conclusion is that Belfast must be a very healthy city – even if one or two parts of its anatomy are not necessarily in such fine fettle.

Irish Oak

Belvoir Forest is home to the oldest recorded oak trees in Ireland.  Many are over 300 years old.  The oldest specimen (1642) pre-dates the Battle of the Boyne by a half-century.  According to Dr Ben Simon, this  
“is the oldest date so far found for any tree in a woodland in Ireland.”[3]  

He adds that the largest of these veteran oaks, known affectionately as Granddad, 
“is a massive squat hollow tree with a circumference of 8.8 metres just above ground level making it one of the largest oaks in Ireland.”

Researchers from Queens University Belfast have carried out research to establish such facts in a project entitled “Quercus” (Latin for oak).  I like the subtlety of using Latin, whose first two letters also happen to be the university’s initials.

Our Irish oak tree has additional significance.   It is emblematic and used in many place-names. 
It is the symbol of County Londonderry, as a vast amount was covered in oak forests.  The county’s name derives from the Irish Doire, meaning oak.  

Other examples include the village Edenderry which lies in the Lagan Valley Park, and which was an important centre in the Irish Linen industry.

According to the Woodland Trust, Northern Ireland has only 6% woodland cover.  Finland has 73% and the European average is 45%.  Our emerald isle is, ironically and sadly, one of the least wooded countries in Europe.   

Yet everybody knows that we need native trees to help combat climate change and improve our environment.  We have a lot to do to catch up.

Step forward Sean Citizen.  The Lagan Valley Regional Park office runs projects promoting volunteering, such as tree planting and removing invasive plants (“balsam bashing”).  These eager beaver volunteers have collected 13,000 oak acorns for replanting.  

Another project is the Wildlife Monitoring Project.  Ordinary people are involved in surveying park life ranging from bats, butterflies, birds, foxes, frogs and squirrels.

Red squirrels

Our native red squirrel is a candidate for membership of the club of endangered species. The threat comes from the American grey squirrel, which has adapted so well that it is winning the competition for survival.  Greys were introduced inadvertently to Ireland in 1911 when a group of them escaped from a gift hamper given to a woman at Castle Forbes in County Longford by the Duke of Buckingham[4].

In response to the crisis, voluntary Red Squirrel Groups were established in Tollymore Forest Park in County Down, the Glens of Antrim, the Sperrins in Counties Tyrone and Derry, and in Lagan Valley.  Despite the efforts, the sad news is that reds have disappeared from the Lagan Valley Park.  None have been seen since 2011.

The grey marauders are better at finding food and shelter. They forage so ruthlessly that they damage trees.  

Greys are so greedy that they devour buds and shoots of trees before they are ready for consumption. I have seen them do this in Belvoir Forest on hazelnut bushes and on larch trees, the staple diet of our little reds. Greys even wipe out birds by robbing their nests.

To make matters worse, the grey invaders also spread the squirrelpox virus to which they are immune, but which kills reds.  In April 2011, it was reported that this deadly virus has been positively identified for the first time anywhere in Ireland.  The specialist Moredun Laboratory in Edinburgh confirmed it as the cause of death of a red squirrel in Tollymore Forest Park.  The following month, BBC Northern Ireland’s Newsline television programme reported that seven reds have died from the disease in Tollymore Forest Park.  

It’s going to take more than voluntary work to tackle this pressing problem.

A couple of years ago, Belfast Zoo established a red squirrel nook as part of a wider initiative to protect endangered native species.  Recent reports about success in the breeding programme provide some cautious grounds for optimism.

Birdlife

Taking our minds off the elusive red squirrels, birdlife in Lagan Valley Park present a brighter picture.   

The musical sounds of great tits can be heard trilling “teacher teacher.”  The even more melodious blackcap can sometimes be heard singing like an operatic diva.  

I have also seen starlings, blue tits, thrushes, coal tits and, on occasions the rare and mouse-like vertically moving tree creepers. For me, however, the heron is the most majestic bird in Lagan Valley as it perches itself statuesquely yet with hidden menace on a strategically placed branch protruding from the water.

The Park is also home to other animals like foxes and rabbits.

Threats

Ben Simon describes Belvoir Park as the “prime example of a woodland under threat.” He says that the wooded former Demesne with its collection of veteran oaks is “of regional importance, and yet there is a plan for a bus route to be constructed amongst the trees.”  In which case questions arise about the sustainability of the Government’s transportation strategy.

In recent times, another threat has led to the felling of 6500 larch trees in the forest.  The Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service took this radical action following the discovery of the Phytophthora ramorum disease.  It is understood that the plan foresees natural regeneration as the best way for the Park to restore its population of native trees.  

In the short term, however, the visual impact has been emphatic.

A major reason for the success and popularity of the Lagan Valley Park is the fact that it is very well managed.  The LVRP charitable company which organises events, educational tours, applies for funding, organises the volunteers - and much more little-heralded work - is currently under threat because of proposed cuts to its budget by a Government Department. They do this on a proverbial shoestring. 
Wiser minds than this author are campaigning to persuade the authorities of the myopic folly of their ways. It does seem paradoxical economic theory to fix the nation's budget deficit by penalising voluntary work.

The Giants Ring

One of the most impressive aspects of Regional Park is its archaeology.  This ranges from the ancient to the relatively more recent industrial revolution of immediate past centuries. 

How many cities have a 4800-year-old ancient monument on its doorstep?  The Giants Ring predates Machu Picchu, Delphi and the Parthenon.  It was built at the end of the Neolithic or the beginning of the Bronze Age around an earlier Neolithic passage grave.  It consists of a circular enclosure, 200m in diameter, surrounded with a 4metre high earthwork bank with 5 entrances, and a small neolithic passage grave.   The tomb is believed to date from 3000 BC, and the bank slightly later. 

The Park also contains raths (late iron age/early Christian period monuments, usually 25-30m diameter).[5]  One such rath sits prominently, yet inconspicuously, across the road at one of Belfast’s busiest roundabouts, at the House of Sport.

The Canal Towpath

The Lagan Canal Trust[6] has published a guidebook about more recent archaeology explaining the history of the canal, from the start of its construction in 1756.

It includes information about the linen industry, which gave the canal much of its raison d’être, with mills at Hilden, Lambeg, and Edenderry.  It also contains maps of the towpath extending from the Kings Bridge at Stranmillis all the way to Warren Gate Bridge in Lisburn.

Kathleen Rankin tells the story of the linen families and their great houses[7]. As she says, Lagan Valley was an agriculturally fertile area and was one of the first to be settled in the Plantation of Ulster in the early seventeenth century.  She adds that for nearly 250 years, linen yarn and cloth were produced in great abundance in Lagan Valley.  

Belfast was known as “Linenopolis.”

May Blair has recorded the oral history of the Lagan Canal[8].   

She brings to life the daily existence of people who lived and worked alongside it, having scoured libraries, old newspapers, Government archives, and photographs. 

Most tellingly, she interviewed lock keepers, lightermen, haulers, canal-side farmers, and families.

For example, she describes meeting James Rafferty’s widow Lizzie when she was 94 who, when asked if her husband had been a lighterman, she replied proudly  
“yes – and I was a lighterwoman.”

Lizzie told her about raising the first three of her twelve children on board and that those were the happiest days of her life.

A Park of Contrasts

Lagan Valley Regional Park is a sensory delight.

I recall fondly our family Christmas Day walk a couple of years ago when picture postcard images came true.  We walked from Shaws Bridge a couple of miles up the towpath towards Lisburn as far as Gilchrists Bridge and returning on the other bank of the river.  In brilliant light it was an idyllic festive and sun-kissed scene, complete with an ice-covered river and a robin staking territory below snow-laden branches.  Healthy and exhilarating.  I saw a man cross-country skiing.

By contrast, every July our nasal senses are assaulted fragrantly when we visit the Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park to see its famous international collection of multi-coloured rose gardens.  
It’s a place where I always seem to get lost, literally and metaphorically - the idyllic escape.

©Michael McSorley 2014

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[1] http://www.laganvalley.co.uk/

[2]NITB statistics Tables 5 & 6.  http://www.detini.gov.uk/northern_ireland_visitor_attraction_survey__january_-_december_2013___2_.pdf?rev=0

[3] “If Trees Could Talk: The Story of Woodlands around Belfast.” Ben Simon (2009)

[4] Irish Times report 6 January 2010

[5] “Recognising Irish Antiquities” The Archaeological Survey of Northern Ireland (undated)

[6]“A Guide to the Lagan Canal Past Present Future” Lagan Canal Trust (undated)

[7] “The Linen Houses of the Lagan Valley." The story of their families.” Kathleen Rankin (Ulster Historical Foundation 2002)

[8] Once upon the Lagan. The Story of the Lagan Canal.” May Blair (Blackstaff Press 1981)