More from the Geopark Festival
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What ancient music was celebrated at the Geopark Festival?
More ancient music of the area was celebrated as a part of the Geopark Festival last weekend. Natalie Serena of Eirú Harps, based in Uachtarárd, is an expert in the historical harps and gave a fascinating talk about the instrument's connections to the nearby O'Flaherty stronghold of Achanur Castle. Earlier that day, people walked the banks of the Owen Riff as it flows into Corriban and heard from Geopark geologist, Benjamin Lebedo, who we met earlier, local archaeologist, Bill Daly, and local ecologist, Greg Ford. Lorna Siggins joined them.
Pat O'Brien. And you're a climate ambassador?
What insights did Nathalie Surina share about historical harps?
Climate ambassador with Antoshka for the year. And are you here in your climate ambassador capacity or just out of interest? No, fact finding. Yeah, I mean, I live relatively near here and you can always learn something. Maybe give me some ideas. What does this Geopark designation mean to you? Well, it just means, I suppose, what Ben said about the awareness. It's not about archaeologists or environmentalists. It's about everybody who puts their feet on the ground or looks up at the sky. Every one of us is involved in the community, whether it's just feeding the birds or leaving the dandelions until the birds can feed on them, recognising nature and loving it.
And of course, this is a... 1,500 square kilometre community now.
Yeah, and I think no more than saying things like climate ambassador, people should not be put off by the words. And like I know Ben, I would have known him for a while now, Patricia Walsh and those, they've worked so hard within the communities.
What role do local ecologists play in the Geopark community?
Patricia Walsh really pioneered this, didn't she, from Petersburg? Yeah, yeah. It's very exciting. And I mean, I'm retired, so I love this kind of stuff. You know, it kind of feeds into my imagination and interest. Dr. Greg Ford, when we're thinking of geoparks we're thinking of mountains and hills and rocks but obviously there are lowlands and there are rivers and streams that are running down from those mountains and we're at the Owen Rift River so why is it so important?
If you're talking about a geopark, you're talking about the entire biodiversity of a very large area. What creates a lot of the landscape are the rivers and streams. We're blessed here in Uachtarárd because we've got this amazing river called the Óin Riff. It flows all the way through the village, right before all the houses, and yet there's an incredible living heritage in it. in that we've got otters here, kingfishers, and, of course, the very valuable pearl mussel. There's only about 11 good rivers with pearl mussels in the country.
And they're our oldest living animals.
There you go. You know, it lives to, in some places, 100 years old.
I was hoping you wouldn't contradict me.
Well, I'm glad you said animal because there's lots of other fungi that are tens of thousands of years old or whatever. Yeah, it's an incredible creature because it's its resilience, I think, that's the key thing. A lot of people say, oh, the rivers are polluted and that. The key to showing whether the river is polluted or not is if the pearl mussels are alive... And they're 70, 80 years old. They have withstood all that's gone through that river in that particular time.
What does being a Climate Ambassador entail for Pat O’Brien?
Now, they can withstand a pulse of pollution or enrichment going through or oil or something like that they've washed in off the road because they can clam up closed and let it pass. But the key to showing that the river is healthy today was being able to see them open and filtering water while we were walking along by the river. We were looking at a few of them. A fantastic asset. So much going on around us here. We were chatting to some people there. There were wagtails and dippers. In the middle of it all, a sparrowhawk swooped through just to kind of show that, you know, we might be having a bit of a day off, but it's a hard life out there.
Which you spotted before any of us.
Well, I live on the river. Any of my downtime is spent just looking and listening. The dippers, I watched a mother and two chicks there, not this year, last year, and coming up beside me.
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