Wonder of ancient wood must not be allowed to be destroyed

Thursday, November 29, 2007

By Eamonn Mc

George and Damien led us along discreet paths laid by the Woodland Trust through the untamed clumps of beech, ash, birch and hazel, past sturdy oak plinths with delicate carvings and poems by children celebrating the squirrels, badgers, foxes, butterflies, bluebells and buzzards and long-eared owls, which make Prehen Wood a wonderland of nature just a stroll from Guildhall Square.

What we wondered at the end of our ramble through mushy late-autumn leaves was how anyone, much less someone with formal responsibility for protecting our environment, could contemplate risking such a unique, invaluable, irreplaceable resource to facilitate what the planners call 'development'.

Last month, Environment Minister Arlene Foster rejected the pleas of local residents and environmentalists and rubber-stamped approval for four houses on a patch of open space abutting the woods and an access road that will snarl through the trees.

Vandals have been hacking at Prehen for hundreds of years. Derry's first governor following the Plantation, Sir Henry Docwra, recalled in his diary in 1600 that men he sent across the river to collect timber from the wood met resistance from locals every time. Ms Foster seems intent on seeing the locals off at last.

Prehen Wood is one of the last pristine patches of the woodland which once canopied much of north eastern Ireland and blanketed the east bank of the Foyle with rich greenery from where Craigavon Bridge stands today all the way along the river to Tyrone. A 1977 survey by the Environment and Heritage Service reported: "Prehen Wood represents a significant block of semi-natural woodland, which is a scarce resource in Northern Ireland. In terms of its habitat, species diversity and mammal interest, it is already of Local Nature Reserve status."

Sixty plant species have been recorded in the wood - including orchids, anemones, bluebells. When I was growing up in the Bogside, we called it the Bluebell Wood, and used to marvel that however often we went over to play and came back with huge armfuls of bluebells, next time there'd still be swathes of abundant blue blossoms nodding serenely in the glades.

The wood is one of the last redoubts of our native red squirrel.

Just two weeks after Ms Foster sanctioned the development, her department, in conjunction with the Republic's National Parks and Wildlife Service, put out for consultation an "action plan for the endangered red squirrel" .

For all sorts of anthropomorphic reasons, and on account of the Beatrix Potter images imprinted on memory from childhood, the red squirrel is perhaps the most popular wild mammal in these islands. It is exclusively a woodland creature. Cut away woodland, and you've slashed the chances of it surviving.

The Species Action Plan estimates that grey squirrels, which relentlessly force the smaller red squirrels out, are now established in 22 of the 32 counties in Ireland, including all six in the North, and are expanding at a rate of 1.9 kilometres a year - while red squirrels are declining in numbers at 1% a year.

One of the measures set out in the North-South paper is the promotion and preservation of precisely the type of woodland epitomised by Prehen.

There are no grey squirrels in Prehen Wood, and locals are determined to keep it that way. But Ms Foster and the planners and developers may achieve what the alien grey fails to inflict on the area.

The planning service and the department found in favour of the development despite the unanimous objection of local councillors, in contradiction of the Derry Area Plan, in defiance of the advice of the Landscape Architects Branch, contrary to the recommendation of the Environment and Heritage Service, in opposition to the designation of the wood as an Area of Natural Conservation and a site of Local Amenity Importance, and against the strong opposition of the surrounding community.

Eamon Deane of the Holywell Trust, which has weighed in with a will behind the PHES, commented yesterday: "Communities are still being held to ransom by profit-motivated developers who seem to be considered more important than the environment, our heritage and our democratic processes put together."

The Programme for Government launched by Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness on October 25 stated: "We have a rich and varied natural heritage, which includes habitats and species of international, national and local significance. In recent years, a combination of factors has resulted in major changes to our environment and threats to the diversity of our wild life. Action is needed to protect and enhance our environment for future generations."

Quite so. Now, would they ever call in Ms Foster and spell these truths out for her benefit, and for the benefit of all in the future who might spend a childhood afternoon scampering through the woodland to come upon a red squirrel twitching inquisitively in the trees, before ambling home for teatime with arms full of flowers.