Linking the past and future

LIMERICK cattle can’t just waltz onto the Burren landscape: they need a few months for their soft, pampered hooves to get acclimatised to the craggy, often treacherous, limestone fields of their new home.
So renowned Burren cattle authority Margaret Daly recently told me with a smile, as she explained some of the complexities involved in rearing cattle in the Burren – complexities faced here since Neolithic farmers began clearing the pine and hazel woodland to expose pasture for their stock and soil for crops.
The bare Burren landscape we find so compelling today is not a natural phenomenon. It’s a man-made environmental catastrophe – our equivalent to the Saharafication devastating North Africa today. Man strips the land of trees and vegetation and the wind and rain washes the soil away. In the Burren, however, unlike in the Sahara, man was able to adapt and thrive.

Read the full feature in this week's edition of The Tuam Herald