Eanna Ní Lamhna: National Geographic Symphony 'shows world at its most beautiful'

TO say Eanna Ní Lamhna is well got in the areas of conservation and the environment would be something of an understatement.

A former president of An Taisce, and the Tree Council of Ireland, she has also worked for the forerunner of the EPA, to say nothing of her qualifications in the field of biology, being Ireland’s best known entomologist.

The Louth native is best known these days as a contributor to RTE Radio’s nature show Mooney Goes Wild, where her brisk, no-nonsense tones entertain and inform on matters environmental each Monday.

So when invited to come on board as an ambassador for National Geographic’s Symphony For Our World, coming to Limerick this Saturday, September 29, she was quick to see the value the event could have in bolstering our sense of what is important in these days of environmental turmoil.

“The event is showing the world at its most beautiful,” she tells the Limerick Leader, “you see the beauty as if you went out there yourself. You’re under the sea looking at fish, you’re in the air, up in the mountains.

“Much of the time, you know, we’re being told we’re going to hell in a handcart, we mustn’t be throwing away rubbish, the bees are all dead, the animals are dying, the oceans are polluted, the world is over - it’s a negative message.

“And if you were to only get that opinion about the world all the time, that viewpoint, I mean, why should we care?”

Answering her own query, she explains, “We should care, because we have a beautiful world, but we’ve never seen this beautiful world. We’re always told, ‘it used to be like this’.

“But there is a huge amount of beauty still left and when you see this, you realise what a fragile world this is and how one species - humans - can have an impact on other things.

“It’s not one we want to have, but we do, and there is a lack of knowledge or awareness that this is the kind of thing we’re destroying.

“It's the kind of thing that has been here for millions of years and it’s still here on our watch. So the National Geographic production is celebrating all of this, the beauty of the world in which we live. It’s a positive image, this is what we all belong to and isn’t it a lovely place?

“So, if you go to this, I certainly think you will be inspired to see the point of not throwing paper bags, not throwing plastic in the sea, using electric cars, you’d see the point of it, when you see what it is we have.”

With the production serving as a reminder of what it is we have to fight for, it will also hopefully play its part for the conservation effort in Ireland, which, Eanna says, is doing ok, but of course could be doing better.

“It’s a matter of awareness,” she says, “knowing what the situation is, realising the importance of doing something about it. In a lot of cases, this awareness is not there, but there is a lot more than there used to be.

“I mean, 80% of our schools have green flags for environmental awareness, it’s part of our educational system.

“When I went to school, me and Finn McCool, there was no such thing as environmental awareness. People running the country back then had no awareness of it, but the current crop running the country would have learned this in school, so that’s progress.”

She acknowledges the importance, also, of the European Union in Irish environmental conservation, having “dragged us kicking and screaming” into protecting habitats and ecosystems, which we had no prior policy of doing.

As she says, if we wanted to join their club and get their money, which we did, then we had to abide by their rules.

“There was some of us at the time who said, ‘what are they doing in Brussels, can’t they mind their own business’. But it wasn’t their business, it was all of our business and since we didn’t know what to do or how to do it, they showed us, bless their cotton socks.”

Looking to the future, Eanna is unequivocal when it comes to what we should concentrate on when I try to nail her down to one single environmental initiative.

“I’d encourage people to plant more trees,” she says, definitively, “the only way we’re going to get carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is by photosynthesis.

“We have the least amount of trees in Europe, only 12% of our land, compared to 40% on mainland Europe. This is something we can control, it’s not as if we can’t plant more trees, so that, I think, is a no-brainer.”

Tickets for the event are available through ticketmaster.ie or from Gleeson’s Sports Scene, William Street.