Operation Noah Enniskillen

Several interesting biodiversity activities are coming up in Fermanagh shortly (thanks to Laurence for forwarding the details )
Butterfly Conservation Practical Volunteer Day for the Local Biodiversity Action Plan and Priority Butterfly Species, the Dingy Skipper
Saturday 19th November 2011 – 10.30am to 4pm. Meet at the Round ‘O’ Park, Enniskillen.
A practical conservation activity is being organised by Butterfly Conservation Northern Ireland for West Fermanagh to help the conservation of an endangered butterfly species, the Dingy Skipper, now confined to the county. The activity will involve cutting and removing scrub from an area that has a known population to improve the habitat for its preferred food-plant, the wildflower Birds-foot Trefoil. All the equipment will be provided although you must come dressed to work outdoors and sturdy boots or well-fitting wellingtons will be essential. A reasonable level of fitness will also be required as we will be working on rough pasture. Please also bring a packed lunch to keep your energy levels up! For further information, please contact Rose Cremin at tel: 028-66325050 or email rose.cremin@fermanagh.gov.uk

Fermanagh Red Squirrel Group (FRSG) Meeting
Thursday 8th December 2011 – 19.00pm to 21.00pm, Townhall, Enniskillen.
A FRSG meeting has been organised for December to bring together members since we last met back in the springtime. The meeting is open to all including those who have not attended before but are interested in red squirrel conservation. We will be discussing activities and events since we last met and importantly, sharing information and best practice on managing feeders and for some, operating traps in controlling grey squirrel populations. Leaflets and information on red squirrel conservation topics will be available for people to take home and we will also have feeders and other equipment on display. You are welcome to drop-in or if interested in managing a feeder, please contact the Biodiversity Officer prior to the meeting on tel: 028-66325050 or email rose.cremin@fermanagh.gov.uk

‘Hedgerows Grow West’ Project for 2012
Fermanagh District Council’s Local Biodiversity Action Plan (LBAP) is expecting to secure funding for the conservation and protection of a local priority habitat – hedgerows. The project will conserve hedgerows through practical management and restoration on sites that are open to the public such as community centres and allotments. The project will provide training on all aspects of hedgerows from surveying to restoration as well as supplying the materials and equipment needed. We are inviting suitable groups or organisations to express their interest in being involved in this exciting project which promises to enhance the health of both our wildlife and community populations! To get involved, please contact the Biodiversity Officer on tel: 028-66325050, or by emailing rose.cremin@fermanagh.gov.uk

Woodland Trust – Community and School Tree Packs (Free!) – Late Winter/Early Spring 2012
Every autumn and spring, free tree packs are available for groups and schools to receive from the Woodland Trust. The Community Group packs come in two sizes: 105 trees (suitable for a hedge or copse) and 420 trees (ideal for approximately 1 acre). The tree packs come in four different themes, reflecting a variety of outcomes a group may be looking for. These include year-round colour, wood fuel, wild harvest and wildlife. Schools can apply for up to 60 trees, including a Royal Sapling grown from a seed from Sandringham or Windsor to celebrate the Jubliee Year. For more information on these packs or to apply, you need to visit www.woodlandtrust.org.uk. Fermanagh District Council’s Biodiversity Officer can also help groups with the process eg identifying the most suitable themed-pack to plant or the actual planting itself. She can be contacted on tel: 028-66325050 or via email at rose.cremin@fermanagh.gov.uk

Meanwhile, as you’ll have noticed, we haven’t had many Operation Noah Enniskillen meetings or events lately.  This is because several of us have been quite heavily involved in the Fermanagh Fracking Awareness Network and just haven’t had time for anything more.  The issue of shale gas extraction using hydraulic fracturing is one of the most important current climate change-related problems, certainly for Fermanagh, and so I would urge everyone to find out more about it.  The FFAN has a website at www.frackaware.com and I have also written about the issue on my own blog at www.decombustion.com.  Of course, if anyone else has any ideas for specific ONE activities and a few minutes to organise them, please do let me know.

with best wishes, Tanya

To celebrate Moving Planet Day this Saturday, 24th September, Operation Noah Enniskillen and friends will be walking up Topped Mountain (between Enniskillen and Tempo) and enjoying the sustainable pleasures of countryside, company and a simple shared lunch. All are very welcome, including those with four legs.
Meet at the Topped Mountain car park at 12.30pm (in the spirit of the day, if you can get there without a car, or at least sharing with others, please do so!)

Bring (if you like):

Something simple to share for lunch (flapjack, apples …)
A banner or sign representing the Moving Planet, 350, Operation Noah, no fracking …. (if you use a blanket or similar it can double as a picnic rug)

I’ve written up a few notes about the issues surrounding fracking on my blog at www.decombustion.com – fairly basic but it can perhaps act as a springboard to further investigation (if that isn’t a hopelessly mixed metaphor…)

We’ll have a short Operation Noah Enniskillen meeting this Thursday (8th Sept) at 5pm at our house (7 Lakeside Avenue, off the Irvinestown Rd, Enniskillen) to talk about what we’re going to do for 350.org’s Moving Planet day on September 24th. All welcome – please come along if you can.

Probably most people have heard of hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking’, the very controversial technique for extracting oil and gas, particularly shale gas, from rock formations by injecting fluid at such pressure that the rock fractures. These operations, especially in the United States, have led to many environmental and health concerns, including the contamination of drinking water with carcinogenic chemicals used in the process. This Wikipedia article is a starting point for finding out more.
What I didn’t know until this week was that there are advanced proposals to carry out hydraulic fracturing in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, including Fermanagh. The following links give details of the exploratory licences granted here.

link 1

link 2

link 3

Obviously this is a matter of grave concern for all who care about the health and well-being of the residents and natural environment of our region. It is also, of course, in direct conflict with the need to reduce our carbon emissions and dependence upon fossil fuels.

There is a group on Facebook called Protect Our Environment – No Fracking Here! which contains links to press articles as well as discussion of the best ways to campaign on this issue. If you are on Facebook please join it – if not, and you’d like me to forward information from the group then please let me know.

Meanwhile if anyone has further information, contacts or suggestions about positive and effective ways of campaigning then please share them if you can. Perhaps most importantly, please let others know. This is one of the most important local issues that has arisen recently – it would be a terrible thing if, through ignorance and inertia, we were to lose our most precious and essential resource, our clean and safe water.

On Sunday April 17th, a beautiful spring day, we met at Correl Glen near Derrygonnelly to take part in Northern Ireland’s Big Spring Clean. The event was organised by Laurence Speight, in his free moments between standing for the local council elections as our Green Party candidate and Nicola from Tidy Northern Ireland came along to provide us with equipment and moral support.

The usual problem arising from doing anything outside Enniskillen, when most of us, for one reason or another, don’t have cars, was generously solved by Fiona and our inimitable crooner Frankie Dean (no prizes, even sustainable ones, for guessing whose vehicle this is).

Like all great occasions, it began with food, a picnic featuring Aidan’s home-made muffins and a positively totalitarian choice of sandwiches – lettuce and cheese, or, er, lettuce and cheese. I’d carefully washed out a stack of cups and left them drying on the draining board, so we were all extremely grateful to see Laurence arrive with a bagful of spare mugs. Eventually, despite the preponderance of teenage boys in the party, we’d eaten enough and, depositing our rubbish in the first of Nicola’s sturdy bags, proceeded to work.

Litter Northern Ireland pack some serious kit – Nicola hadn’t only brought along colour-co-ordinated bin liners for recyclable and non-recyclable rubbish but also logoed reflective vests (or waistcoats, as we on this side of the Atlantic really ought to call them), heavy duty litter pickers (as modelled here by Eoin) and gloves so sturdy that I could hardly bend my fingers in them.

The actual litter-collecting, though there was less rubbish per square foot than at our previous clean-up in Hillview, proved to be quite exciting, with steep cliffs, thick undergrowth, hidden pits and, as the afternoon grew hotter, incipient sunstroke. Michael, egged on by his young son, made a death-defying leap across the swift-flowing river to retrieve a plastic biscuit box while Glenn’s shirt was irreparably leapt upon by some species of spiky vegetation. After an hour or so all of us, except for Laurence and his daughter, had wended our weary way back to the car park where we recovered with cold water, anti-bacterial wipes and desultory chat.

Finally, however, just when we were concluding that they had not so much gone green as gone native, the Speights returned, laden with the last few bags to add to our haul. Enniskillen District Council, who had also provided reflective clothing and litter-pickers, had agreed to collect the rubbish on Monday morning, so all we had to do was leave it well secured against passing marauders, and return home, tired, enbrowned by both sun and muck, but happy to have done our small bit towards keeping Northern Ireland green and clean.

We have a new event taking place this Sunday, 17th April at Correl Glen Nature Reserve, four miles outside Derrygonnelly.  The reserve is home to many species of wildlife but sadly the embankment by the road that runs by the glen has become littered, representing a hazard to the welfare of the animals and birds.  Thanks to Laurence Speight, who has arranged the event, we are planning a Spring Clean of the area as part of the Big Spring Clean organized by Litter Northern Ireland and the Belfast Telegraph.

Fermanagh Council has kindly agreed to lend us high-visibility vests and litter pickers and to provide and collect bin bags for the rubbish we pick up.  All we need therefore are good gloves (I have some left over from the Hillview clean-up if anyone needs them) sturdy clothing and waterproof footwear.  We will meet for the clean up at the Navar Forest Drive  car park at 2pm, although if the weather is fine you may like to bring a picnic along and meet there at 1.30pm for lunch beforehand.

It would be helpful if you could let me know by Thursday evening if you plan to come along so that we can borrow enough vests and litter pickers from the Council and so that we can let you know of any changes to the planned arrangements.  Please also let me know as soon as possible if you either need a lift or can offer a lift to others.  Directions to the car park are at the end of this email.

As always, the event is open to all and we look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on Sunday.

I’ve just found out about this event, which I think will be of great interest to ONE members:

Prof Iain Stewart public lecture: Wild about Water
Date and time: 18 March 2011 from 19:00 to 21:00

To celebrate World Water Day and to mark the end of National Science and Engineering Week, the Marble Arch Caves Global Geopark is hosting a laidback lecture at Enniskillen Castle Museums delivered by the BBC’s Prof Iain Stewart.
Presenter of BBC shows such as Journeys from the Centre of the Earth, Earth: The Power of the Planet, The Climate Wars and most recently, Making Scotland’s Landscape and Men of Rock, Prof Iain Stewart is one of the most engaging and passionate Science communicators of our time.
The unprecedented flooding in Cavan and Fermanagh in 2009 wreaked havoc along the Erne river system and further afield but is this the sign of things to come? Prof Stewart will investigate just how much of this is down to climate change, if it has ever happened in the past and whether there is anything we can do about it!
The lecture will take place in Enniskillen Castle Museums on Friday 18th March from 7pm to 9pm, is completely free.
Places are limited and will be available on a strictly first come first served basis. To book your place then please contact the Marble Arch Caves Visitor Centre on +44 (0) 28 6634 8855.

Meanwhile many thanks to Marella Fyfe and John Skinnader for their interesting and inspiring talks at our last two meetings. We’ll meet again on Thursday 24th March, usual time and place, when, among other things, we’ll be talking about how we can get a food-growing project off the ground (or maybe into it!) and how we can celebrate Earth Hour.