Irish Times Biodiversity Crusade

Is there an argument against biodiversity? Does anyone think that reducing the number of plant and animal species in the wild is actually a beneficial course of action?

(s11e5)

Not a balanced OP for demanding of balanced takes tbh. What's the problem with biodiversity and how is it an attack on farmers and foresters? Without bemoaning mummies and lattes please.

Those "Just Stop Biodiversity" lads are the feckin' worst.

If you read the Irish Times you deserve to be misinformed. The purpose of media is to control public discourse. Irish people do love being told what to think tho, there is that! And we hate hearing alternate views....that really gets us angry!

Intensive agriculture and monoculture forestry being terrible for nature, they're not wrong.

Also terrible for nature; manicured gardens and lawns, pesticides, proprietary poisons intended for vermin, golf courses, acres of tarmac and concrete. Pollution; incl domestic and industrial. So having a swipe at everyone here, not just farmers!

LED street lighting, coastal conurbations, motorways, foreign travel, wine, diverse and/or niche diets. All bad for biodiversity, most are good for the life and style section in IT

Ireland's mostly small acreage rural farming practices with many a hedgerow and stone wall, often with knot of trees on a 'fairy fort' or the corners of a field, are a strong promotion of biodiversity in a way that the massive grid square fields of uniform crops that often characterise intensive farming elsewhere do not.

If the IT want to promote biodiversity they should take a bigger swing at Coillte, who, when they're not trying to sell half of Ireland to a vulture fund are blighting the landscape with non-native Sitka spruce trees that poison the earth and turn the land and bogs they are planted on into dead zones, because feck all can live in those forrests. Our 'national forestation policy' is actually driven by pure greed rather than a concern for the environment. We have only 1% of the country covered in native forest as a result.

Of course, tackling big businesses, that cause the majority of environmental harm, is not in the nature of our quisling government, not when there’s a little guy they can tax, regulate and bother.

What amazes me about so many of these articles is how often the writer comes form an rea of the country where they're likely never have set foot on a farm and have no clue how the food they eat got on their table, or ever went near a forestry.

The same writers will then next week tell you all about their trips to New York for such an event, their foreign holidays, a festival they've been to, what foods to eat (usually the imported cash crop or fad healthy fruit/veg of the month varieties) and how need more housing than ever while not ruining "the character" of the the inner cities with high rise apartments despite in my cases the dilapidated nature of said area.

In other words, stuff you should do that won't apply to me.

...id love to know why the op is continually reading such, if it leads to such disgust, thats a bit weird!

Could well be.

Might not be Ireland's acreage but it's Ireland's ecological impact.

Up north but christ, lough neagh is in a bad way