WE all love our parks – but what about the whole of Belfast becoming one giant park dedicated to wildlife?
That’s the dream of a group led by conservationist Conor McKinney and they’re bringing the public on board with a series of workshops at all four corners of the city. Next Wednesday they’ll be in Grosvenor Community Centre and the following night at the Duncairn on Duncairn Avenue, with two meetings the following week in south and east Belfast (all 6pm).
Conor – who started Wild Belfast, helped save the Lagan starlings and also spearheaded the house martin nestboxes at Cliftonville’s Solitude – says Belfast is a city like no other, with a rich urban culture where people have access to rivers, forests, parks and the sea – as well as those marvellous hills.
“National parks are special places where we have a better relationship with nature – a national park city is a city-wide vision to shift our collective understanding of what and who a city is for," he said.
“We want your help create a vision that is unique to Belfast. This is not a process reserved for policymakers. It’s not a vision that is handed down, it has to be created from the ground up.”
National Park Cities is a relatively new concept – London was the first in 2019, and it’s been followed by Adelaide, Chattanooga in Tennessee and Breda in Holland. But plenty more including Belfast are queuing up for the honour.
It’s not an easy process and it involves applying a whole set of principles including making sure people have access to nature.
Conor accepts that although we do great things here, there is plenty of room for improvement.
“We want to hear about all the great stuff we are doing in the city, in our alleys, in improving biodiversity and how to apply them to other areas. It includes celebrating the fact that Belfast is a city of sanctuary, where migrants and refugees find shelter. There are seven different strands like trees and wildlife and also access to green space, as well as culture and quality of life and shared decision making.
“We would need to demonstrate that Belfast can tick all those boxes.
“We do a lot of stuff well here and have bold ambitions – we’re celebrating the fact that we are unique and have a fantastic natural resource in the Belfast Hills.
“What we’re looking for is a joyful insurgency across this city to recognise how good we have it and by becoming a National Park City we can get even better.”
He’s got the backing of Queen’s University for the workshops and urban design students will help bring the public’s ideas to life.
It’s a brilliant project and the idea that Belfast as a whole could be a park would make a difference to everyone’s life well into the future.
• To be able to call yourself an Irish champion is extraordinary no matter the subject – and this weekend in County Down the All-Ireland Hedge-Laying champion will be crowned.
Saturday’s event in the village of Killyleagh sounds fantastic – organisers point out that hedge-laying is a highly skilled traditional craft which ensures healthy hedgerows through careful cutting and weaving of branches.
Laid hedges create livestock-proof barriers and of course havens for wildlife. Maybe some of the farmers around Belfast should attend – they seem to be intent on cutting all the hedgerows down and in many cases replacing them with wire fences!
Hedge-laying in Ireland dates back thousands of years and Saturday will see the very best in their field (pun intended) go head to head.
• Talking of champions, West Belfast has got another – the GAA’s Sporting Nature Project. It pipped some of the world’s top sporting organisations at the Sport Positive Summit in London to lift the Biodiversity Project Award last week.
Four West Belfast clubs are involved in the Ulster-wide scheme – St Gall’s, Sarsfield’s, Davitt’s and Lámh Dhearg – and the GAA’s first Sporting Nature Officer, Tim McCann, was shocked to win the award, not least because of the opposition.
“There were sporting organisations from around the world there,” he told Dúlra. “They included Fifa, Uefa, Tottenham Hotspur, Brentford Football Club, Miami Heat basketball team, the Philadelphia Eagles, Munster Rugby and Australia Rules teams. I was just delighted we were nominated and I nearly died when our name was called and then had to make a speech off the cuff!”
He says the award will boost the fledgling project and now other clubs will want to be part of it.
“I never managed to win anything on the pitch even from my earliest days at St Teresa’s Primary School in Lurgan – this is a first!”
Tim picked up the award with one of his heroes – Diarmaid Marsden who won the All-Ireland with Armagh back in 2002.
