Wicklow Mountains Park really could be great again with some careful planning and management

But how true is it? What is the state of nature in the Park and what measures are being taken to manage and restore its biodiversity?

I met with senior staff from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS), who manage it, and who showed me around, last month.

Situated so close to Dublin and the commuter belt of east Wicklow, it is not surprising that the Park and the surrounding uplands are extremely popular.

Visitors will not fail to notice however the seemingly ubiquitous expanses of industrial monoculture forest. These biodiversity dead zones are brutal on the landscape, especially when clear-felled, and do not lend themselves to what many people think of as a ‘national park’ experience. This includes swathes of land along the Spinc walkway near Glendalough, where up to 140,000 people every year take a hike.

Nearly all of this forestry however is managed by the state forester, Coillte, and is not in the National Park at all. This arrangement can be seen on a map of the National Park, which is a splodge of lands with 'fingers' here and there and which are not even all connected to one another. As a result, the visitor can scarcely know whether they are in the National Park or not.

Open areas along the Military Road or the Sally Gap offer endless vistas of open moor. The peatland is a carbon-rich environment and much of it is the source of water for the greater Dublin area and so serves as essential infrastructure as well as wildlife habitat.

As an ecologist, I want to stand in places like this and know whether or not the habitats are in good condition. Peatlands in bad condition, after all, are polluting waterways, releasing carbon, and provide little for species that may be threatened with extinction. But despite, their importance, there is no up-to-date information that can answer this question. This is astonishing for an area that is not only a National Park but is designated as a Special Area of Conservation and Special Protection Area with supposedly strict targets for achieving good condition for species and habitats.

Nevertheless, given how turf-cutting and uncontrolled fires have a long history in the Wicklow uplands, not to mention the proliferation of conifer forestry, it is fair to assume that significant degradation has occurred.

Some degradation is very obvious. NPWS staff, along with volunteers are well advanced in addressing the worst areas, where fires, and trampling from people and animals, along with harsh weather, has resulted in expanses of bare peat. A number of areas, including at Barncullian Ridge, Carrigshouk and Carrigeenduff, are being targeted for restoration, which includes holding onto water using dams made of coir (coconut fibre), timber, stones or bales of sheep wool. The area is then seeded with heather brash which provides a protective layer for plants to germinate.

At the Liffey Head Bog, restoration started back in the 1990s and continues today. The results are phenomenal: with the right conditions, natural vegetation quickly becomes established and the bog is not only protected but is ‘activated’, i.e. peat formation gets going again. This is all very positive.

Last year, for the first time since records began, no uncontrolled fires were recorded anywhere in the Park.

Bird populations in the Park are much diminished when compared to times past. Golden eagles, curlew, ring ouzel, and hen harrier, to name a few, are extinct. Red grouse, on the other hand, seem to be doing well.

Visitors are also likely to notice the non-native Sika deer, which have proliferated in the region. Like elsewhere, the overabundance of deer, has left the small areas of oak woodland in the Park stripped of ground vegetation.

In the uplands, the absence of trees is immediately apparent, even though the area is known to have once had expanses of upland forest with birch, willow and oak. But even where there are native trees, no regeneration is possible due to the hordes of hungry mouths.

NPWS recognises the problem and told me that they are tendering for a culling programme that will reduce the population of deer to a level that would allow for natural tree germination. Currently, deer culling that does occur is not sufficient.

The NPWS has selected some areas for tree planting, and these saplings are behind wire guards to protect from grazing. This is better than plastic tubes but is still not ideal when controlling the grazing pressure needs to be a priority. Great expanses of bracken, a native fern that avoids peaty soil, would be ideal locations for new native woodland.

I was told that a wider woodland strategy for the Park is being prepared and there is even talk of updating the management plan for the Park — the last version of which is now 20 years old.

Drastically reducing the deer population is difficult but achievable. Even if this does happen we are left with 3,500 sheep in the Park, for which farmers have grazing rights.

I was surprised to hear the NPWS say that they believe that sheep numbers are ‘sustainable’. While this may make for good relations with the farming community, it is not based on any sound science. Sheep, just like the deer, will preferentially target any emerging tree seedlings for dinner. Any kind of grazing at all on blanket bogs or wet heath is detrimental, so that as bog restoration expands, sheep will need to be excluded from these areas.

I don’t see any way that sheep are compatible with the aims to have habitats in good condition. Encouraging farmers to switch to upland cattle, which have history in the area, and which are easier to manage, is a way to respect grazing rights while maintaining habitats, such as dry heath, that do need to be grazed.

In its current condition, it’s hard to see how the National Park provides even a flavour of ‘ancient wilderness’ as the NPWS claims. There’s no doubt that good works are underway but a coherent approach to the grazing challenge, basic data on habitat condition or even the overall vision for what the Park needs to be achieving, are all missing.

Then there’s Coillte, whose industrial timber plantations are totally out of keeping with the kind of land management that people and nature desperately need.

This leads to an opportunity: a greatly expanded National Park using Coillte and other public lands where rewilding and nature restoration could be undertaken at an impressive scale.