Misguided Mall ‘clean-up’

BIODIVERSITY LOSS The verdant islands, lush and life-supporting, on the Mall, before their removal. Pic: The Mayo News

Colin Clarke & Kieran Ryan

‘The good thing about science is that it’s true whether you believe it or not’. So says the eminent astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and it would be difficult, and perhaps foolish, to argue with him – even if he doesn’t hail from Westport.
What science is telling us these days is that we are in the midst of a climate and ecological crisis of existential proportions.
One major contributing factor to this crisis is the systematic destruction of the natural world by humans, something which has been ongoing for millennia but which has accelerated dramatically over the past two centuries through industrialisation and the use of fossil fuels.
Our natural world is now so diminished that it would be unrecognisable to people who lived just three or four generations ago, when many of the plants and animals which we now consider to be endangered or extinct were once abundant.
This slow, almost imperceptible loss of biodiversity is known as shifting baseline syndrome, and it obscures the devastating extent to which nature has been eradicated.
Thankfully, for all the doom and gloom of our current scenario, science also offers us pathways out of this apocalyptic decline.
One of those paths is to restore nature, in the expectation that the return of functioning ecosystems can help pull us back from the brink and stabilise the natural systems and processes that we depend on for our very existence.
The problem is that we’re rapidly running out of time, and the planet is quickly approaching tipping points which may bring about irreversible changes to our climate and our biosphere.
While the scale of this challenge is global, every action we take at a local level is significant. Indeed for most of us, the only impact we’ll ever have on climate change – as individuals and as a community – will be at a local level.
It is in this context that we must view the actions of the well-intentioned but misguided men who climbed into the Carrowbeg River in Westport earlier this month with the stated intention of ‘cleaning’ it.
The end result of that endeavour has been the almost total annihilation of biodiversity within the Mall.
It is important to reinforce what biodiversity actually means: A wide variety of living organisms within a given area that coexist to form an ecosystem. This includes animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms.
It is not enough to point to a handful of ducks or a few jumping fish and claim that biodiversity has been preserved.
The building blocks of the river’s ecosystem – the stony banks, the plants, the perfectly natural imperfections – were unceremoniously ripped out by people who neither understood nor respected them.
The river has been sterilised, and Westport is the poorer for it.
What makes this loss of a living river system even harder to take is that there were no appropriate assessments or evaluations carried out prior to the works, nor does there appear to have been permission granted by any relevant authority, such as Mayo County Council or Inland Fisheries Ireland.
In addition, there are no official reports or documents to support the claims that the banks of vegetation within the Mall would have somehow contributed to flooding.
The unilateral actions of the ‘Covie Cleansers’ were not guided by scientific evidence, nor were they endorsed by a clear consensus within the community.
What we are sorely missing is an appropriate community forum within which to discuss matters like this. The loss of Westport’s Town Council has been detrimental, to say the least, and I think that’s something we can all agree on.
Finally, the assertion that this is a case of ‘Covies’ versus ‘Blow-ins’ is completely inaccurate and downright offensive.
There are many local Westport people who adored the Mall as a biodiverse habitat, just as there are plenty of people who moved here from elsewhere who would prefer the river to be neat and tidy.
If – or when – the droughts, floods and famines which are already affecting other parts of our planet strike Westport, they won’t discriminate between Covie and Blow-in.
When it comes to climate change we must all work together, in harmony with nature and guided by 21st century science, and simply hope that we haven’t left it too late to act.
The bad thing about climate change is that it’s coming for all of us, whether you believe in it or not.