The rollout of wind farms in the seas around Ireland must be done in a manner that protects and restores marine life, according to the Irish Wildlife Trust.
The wildlife charity has launched a new campaign calling for large-scale Marine Protected Areas to prevent damage to marine ecosystems as new infrastructure is installed in Irish waters.
It is warning that the protections are necessary, even where that infrastructure is environmentally beneficial.
On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, IWT Campaign Manager Padraic Fogarty the seas have never needed more protection.
“The decarbonising of the economy is absolutely essential,” he said. “It is something we are very supportive of and putting wind turbines out at sea is going to be a really important way of doing that – but this has to come in a way that protects and restores marine life.
“Our seas are in enormous trouble at the moment. They are also part of the carbon solution in themselves because the oceans store an awful lot of carbon, but we are not protecting them.
“We are doing a dreadful job of managing our oceans. We are emptying them of fish and trawling the sea bottoms – that is releasing carbon.”
Today we launch our campaign on the public consultation on Marine Protected Areas for Ireland 🐳
We'll be announcing more events shortly and are hoping you'll all get involved!
Make sure to follow @BiggerBetterMPA for all the latest 🐙 pic.twitter.com/vxmtQ1UWul— Irish Wildlife Trust (@Irishwildlife) April 7, 2021
He said Ireland is only protecting a tiny percentage of its waters at the moment.
“What we don’t have at the moment are marine protected areas which are an absolutely essential component of this conservation strategy,” he said.
“We are not objecting at all to the wind turbines,” he said. “We are objecting to the way in which this is being planned.
“The maps are being drawn for the wind turbines; we also see areas being mapped out for sand and gravel extraction and we are nowhere near identifying even where the marine protected areas are going to go.”
Ballybunion Beach in County Kerry, 21-04-2017. Image: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNewsMr Fogarty noted that the Programme for Government pledges to protect 30% if Ireland’s waters by 2030, adding that Ireland is, “nowhere along the road” to achieving that.
He said the first step will be mapping out exactly where protection would have the most benefit to marine life.
“Where we protect is really, really important,” he said. “The sea is not homogenous. The nature of the sea is not evenly spread.”
The UK-owned Walney Extension in the Irish Sea, around 19km off the coast of the UK is the world's largest working offshore wind farm, 08-09-2021. Image:“There are particular hotspots in our seas for whales and dolphins; there are particular areas that are really important for sea birds and all kinds of other marine life.
“Now, what we want is for the new legislation to allow for planning in the marine environment to also allow for creating marine protected areas.
“If that can’t be done, we should be getting the scientist to map out exactly where these marine protected areas should be going so at least they will have visibility until such time as we are formally designating them marine protected areas.”
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