This article is from page 68 of the 2006-02-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 68 JPG
TOURISM and farming are declining in the Burren and what is now needed “is a radically new approach to strategic planning, management and decision making in the Burren region”.
That is the view of Wildlife Officer with the Heritage Council, Dr Liam Lysaght, who told an audience in Ennis last Wednesday that the Government needed to establish a National Park Authority for the Burren.
Dr Lysaght said that a new landscape-scale national park for the Burren should extend from Doolin and Cliffs of Moher on the north Clare coast up to Kinvara in Co Galway over to Gort and down to Corofin. Currently, only a small portion of the Burren, around the Mullaghmore area, is designated a national park.
Dr Lysaght said that the current National Park – covering an area of 1,500 hectares – was really a nature reserve masquerading as a national park and the new proposal would cover 270 sq km.
No progress has been made on the provision of visitor facilities for the existing National Park over the past five years, since the ill-fated Mullaghmore centre was demolished.
Dr Lysaght said the new large scale park had “huge marketing potential – national parks are recognised world wide as special places and such a brand is a distinct advantage”.
He said the existing National Park was “quite simply too small, by necessity it is inward looking, and has no possibility, nor was it ever really the intention to influence, in any strategic manner, the wider Burren area”.
Dr Lysaght – who worked in the Burren for seven years – said that there was a need to help the community in the Burren realise its expectations, because “despite the Burren being of world renown, here agriculture is in decline, tourism is in decline, recreational opportunities are not fully developed, and there are few if any initiatives to develop produce based on the special characteristics of the region”.
Dr Lysaght said that various reports on future strategy of the Burren had failed and were doomed to fail “because there is no adequate management structure that operates at the strategic level; none that plans and delivers strategic action.
“This is a serious problem for the Burren and one that is a major challenge to have established. A Burren National Park Authority could provide that strategic planning and management which the Burren craves for.”