Ireland Habitat Guide

Eire (as the Republic of Ireland is known) comprises about three-fourths of the island of Ireland, which lies in the Atlantic Ocean, at a distance of about 80 km from the United Kingdom. Separated from the UK by the Irish Sea, Ireland is a country of rolling hills, bogs and the largest river in the British Isles- the Shannon. Much of inland Ireland consists of flat lowlands and bogs, whereas the coastal areas are, on the whole, composed of mountains and hills. Some regions, in particular the land between Cork and Donegal, are almost completely hilly, with a highly indented coastline.

Despite the fact that Ireland’s economy is largely dependent on industry, the country has not suffered much from industrial pollution. Ironically, the main threat to the environment is from agriculture. Agricultural run-offs have polluted local water bodies considerably, and the problem is particularly severe in Ireland’s lakes.

Ireland was, at one time, covered with dense forests of oak; these have, however, been cleared over the past few decades to make way for agriculture. Only about 1% of the original oak forests still stand and efforts, rather half-hearted, to replace these have resulted only in the plantation of pine groves, very different from the native flora of the country. Along with the disappearance of the indigenous flora, some of the fauna too has vanished. However, some native species, including birds such as corncrakes and choughs (crows with vivid red beaks and feet), still chirp in the trees, and mammals like badgers, shrews, pine martens, stoats, squirrels, red deer, foxes and hedgehogs do scamper around the countryside. Many of these are fairly commonly seen, but some, like the pine marten and the stoat, are quite rare.