Blog

Thurs 19th November2020

Pretty muddy on some of the paths but the ponds and grasslands are getting much wetter as well which is welcome.

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Weds 4th November 2020

Wonderful work being done by Shannon Men’s Shed in painting, installing and securing the new benches. Thanks fellas.

Friday 23rd October 2020 – Shannon Wetlands shortlisted for…

Attached is a photo of a beautiful piece of blown glass that was received in the post to commemorate us being shortlisted for the National Heritage Awards in the Water Heritage Award category.

Here’s the video we made to promote ourselves:

And here’s more information about local award winners:

https://www.clarecoco.ie/your-council/[news]/clarecastle-and-ballyea-heritage-group-receives-clare-county-heritage-week-award-2020.html

And the national competition:

https://www.heritageweek.ie/heritage-awards

Tues 18th Aug 2020 – Heritage Week plans

Hi, We will be displaying this poster around Shannon Town to promote this Sunday’s heritage week event.

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Tues 11th August 2020

We have made a promotional film for Heritage Week. Which is now included on the Heritage Week website:

https://www.heritageweek.ie/projects/shannon-town-community-wetlands

The film had to be made that day and submitted to the Heritage website. So it was great what we managed to achieve in such a short timescale. Well done to Olive and John !

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Thurs 16th July 2020 – Committee Meeting

The committee of the Shannon Town Community Wetland have had their first post Covid open air meeting at the wetlands on Thursday last. A draft Biodiversity and Management report commissioned by Clare County Council regarding the wetlands was the focus of discussion. The report gives us a good baseline indication of the current biodiversity and is crucial to planning for the future management of the wetlands. Of note are two rare plants which were identified during the survey. These are Bristly Oxtongue and the Celery Leaved Buttercup. Also decided was to plan for two Heritage Week projects this year. These are a family fun day on Water Heritage Day on Sunday 23rd August when children will become nature detectives and a short video about the wetland restoration project. To ensure that government recommendations about outdoor events can be adhered to it will be necessary to register for the event. We will shortly post information about registration.

Monday 8th June 2019 – Ecologists visit

A few of us (Ruairí, Greg, John, Tony, Congella and myself) met with the ecologists Fran Giaquinto and her colleague Phoebe (I’m afraid I don’t know her last name) on site this morning. 

As we are working with the Clare County Council to develop a biodiversity plan for the wetland.

We gave them a brief overview of what has been done so far and they then went on to walk over the site taking an inventory of everything that they saw there. 

They have said that they will send us their report later together with recommendations for the future management of the site and will meet with us to discuss the same.  

As a few of us were there to continue work on removing the willows we particularly asked them about their recommendation as to the best way to manage this on an ongoing basis.  Their advice was that doing the work now may be counterproductive as by loosening the soil around the roots we are creating ideal conditions for more seeds to seed themselves. 

Their recommendation at this stage is to cease pulling the willows now and then at the end of August do an intensive clearance by hand. 

This could possibly be accomplished as part of a Heritage Week event and thereafter the willows could be kept under control by a single cut with a machine in the Autumn. 

We will await their report to get further details but for now it seems that we should not do any more clearance until we hear more. 

Thanks to everyone who has helped so far.  Don’t put away your forks yet we will need to press them into service again in August. I’ll be in touch again as soon as we have the report from them.

Weds 3rd June 2020 – Great photos of dragon…

Carmel Shaw and her partner Jimmy took these amazing pictures of dragonflies a few days ago. Thanks for sharing.

I was there yesterday and saw 20 or so dragonflies in the far pond mating and laying eggs.

Friday 29th May 2020 – More willows removed

Great weather again as Olive, John, Tom and I removed more willows.

Monday 25th May 2020 – The Willow cull continues

Olive, Tom, John and myself spent a fruitful hour or so this morning digging out the young willows. We marked out squares using bamboo and maintaining a 2m safe distance worked in pairs to clear these areas of willows.

We started with some trepidation as the ground is so hard. But after marking up two square areas we got stuck into the work and the willows, having surprisingly small roots, came up fairly easy with minimal digging.

And after an hour or so we had quite a haul of young willows ready to go to the green waste area of the Shannon Recycling Centre. A good job all round!