FEATURE: Exploring the landscape continues to inspire County Derry ecologist

If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. Well, most people are.

That's the view of County Derry ecologist James Rainey, who spent his formative years roaming the hills of the county, exploring its landscape and its wildlife.

The 29-year-old grew up between Kilrea and Garvagh, and an early interest in wildlife dovetailed nicely with a love of exploring and ample space in which to nourish his passion.

It is a passion that has taken him from Derry's hills to the Scottish Highlands, where he has spent the last number of years working on ecological surveying and re-wilding projects.

At the heart of it all though, is an enthusiasm for exploration.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, hiking the countryside came into vogue. Social media was flooded with photographs of people up mountains, wandering fields and enjoying views they never knew existed.

James says the lack of 'right to roam' legislation in Northern Ireland means the options for anyone wanting to take off into the countryside are limited.

“It's madness that most of the country is out of reach to most people,” he told the County Derry Post.

“In theory, you're supposed to ask the landowner's permission, but you'd be spending a lot of time knocking on doors before going out and looking at some of these places.

“A lot of people at home who go walking, they have to either walk along the road or go to a site that is publicly owned and walk there.

“So many people don't ever get to know the local area they live in, because they're not allowed to go to most of it.

Large swathes of natural habitat have been lost to deforestation and intensive farming over a long period of time.

“I think that's really crazy. Getting to know what was around me back at home – finding a souterrain, ring forts, just looking at the landscape – that was all brilliant.”

James' work involves surveying the condition of the landscapes in the Highlands and looking at ways of re-wilding them and helping wildlife flourish.

A former student of Rainey (no relation, he says) Endowed School in Magherafelt, James says Ireland's famed green landscape can lull people into a false sense of security.

“At home, we generally have a skewed perception of things, because everything is nice and green and looks very pleasant,” he said.

“But in reality, there is not a lot of wildlife that can live in that landscape any more and a lot of the specialist species have been pushed out a long time ago.

“One thing that really stands out is that in the west of Scotland the trees are all covered in these lichens which are associated with old growth forests.

“In Ireland there are hardly any of them at all; I saw some down in Killarney National Park but in general, we wouldn't expect to look at trees and see that stuff.

“We don't even really know what's missing; there are a lot of those things that are lost from our landscape that because we don't interact with very much, we don't realise just how much is gone.”

James spent his early years exploring the woods and landscapes around his native Garvagh.

Intensive farming methods, deforestation and a need for fuel have had a devastating effect on Ireland's ancient woodland.

Clearing trees for farmland, draining peatlands for the digging of turf, and the extensive use of fertilisers has led to the 'homogenisation' of the land.

“What we are left with now is that most of our fields are just one kind of grass,” said James.

“We are cultivating the ground in such a way that only one thing – or very few things – grow there, and that's what I mean by intensive farming, but there are some incredible species-rich farmlands still left.

“Up in Glenullin, along the sides of the hills that run from near Coleraine right down to the Glenshane Pass there are lots of pockets of what we would call 'unimproved land'.

“I've looked at a lot of those places and when I'm back home exploring those are the places I will go to; you still get all these different species and wildflowers.”

Much of James' re-wilding work involves identifying pockets where the ecosystem is already strong and building out, rather than the scatter-gun approach of planting trees in different areas.

He is also critical of the approach taken by the government approaches to both conservation and in particular planning, which he says relies on the public flagging up any issues.

DAERA headquarters in Ballykelly. The organisation's conservation policies have been criticised by a County Derry ecologist.

“The way government went about trying to stop nature from declining was to box off some areas and call them 'protected,” he said.

“So we have all these areas of special scientific interest that are to be protected from damage, but the reality is that lots of them are in very bad condition.

“DAERA never completed the designation of all these protected sites; there are loads of places out there that are vital for wildlife but they never actually finished doing them all.

“The way agricultural payments have worked in the past have actually encouraged farmers to go out and remove a lot of habitat.

“Policy has been a massive driver of the destruction of wildlife in the countryside; it's been the main driver really.

“Planning authorities don't know where a lot of the key wildlife habitats are, so if someone puts in for planning permission on an important area of habitat, it will get granted, unless somebody flags it up.

“If you had a few fields and an area of bog, when people go to apply for planning permission, they go to the bit of bog, because that's worth less than the agricultural land.

rewilding the lowlands:

Ireland's lowlands are in a state of ecological collapse. complex habitats have been largely extinguished and replaced by intensively farmed fields, expanses of bare peat, and conifer plantations.

once-common species now spiral towards extinction pic.twitter.com/0gPoQgv4tR

— Ireland's Environmentalists (@IrelandsEnviro) September 23, 2022

“They have no way of knowing what's actually there in the first place, no one has gone to check them out, so it's a big mess.”

James says a tweak to the current legislation on trespassing would allow people to have a more intimate knowledge of their local areas, and in turn, create more awareness at government level.

“It's a horrible thing to think if you're out roaming that you're not welcome there. It can create that awkward encounter when you're not meant to be there,” he said.

“I know a lot of farmers at home and have good rapport, so they normally let me on, but you can't do that when you don't know who owns the land.

“In Scotland, there is a right to responsible access, because you're not just allowed to go in and do anything, you have to respect there are farm animals and people are making their livelihood.

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“I come across a lot of fly-tipping when I'm out in the country walking. The way most of our wildlife habitats are treated is as if they are a waste ground.

“People will go and dump stuff there, they are not looked after in any kind of sense; it's out of sight, out of mind.

“I've been in incredible gorges along the Antrim coast where hanging off the trees are bits of black plastic, or dead animals dumped down into the gorge.

“It is such a lovely thing to connect with the places around you, and the way things are now is a big barrier to that.”