Kinvara Local Nature Plan 2015 - 2020 Kinvara Local Nature Plan Biodiversity, short for ‘biological diversity’ is the word used to describe the whole variety of life on earth. This includes all the different living organisms such as plants, animals and microbial life as well as the variety of habitats they live in and the ways in which the interact with each other and the world around them. Simply put, biodiversity can be described as the nature all around us. People too are a part of biodiversity and have a role to play in conserving the great variety of nature. A local nature or biodiversity plan sets out a number of agreed actions to help us to conserve, enhance and highlight the natural environment in our local area. This plan was developed by members of the local community in Kinvara in 2015. The project was led by Kinvara Tidy Towns and Community Council with the support of the Galway County Biodiversity Project. Over the course of several meetings, local people met and identified biodiversity features of interest, challenges and opportunities in the Kinvara area. From this, a list actions was drawn up and agreed upon. These are presented in the table on page 7/8. All members of the local community including individuals, families, schools, clubs and other organisations are welcome and encouraged to get involved in the Kinvara Local Nature Plan to enhance and celebrate our wonderful natural heritage Memorial Garden in bloom About Kinvara Kinvara is the anglicised name for Cinn Mhara, literally ‘The Head of the Sea’. It has always been a fishing village, market town and port. Today it is a major tourist destination along the Wild Atlantic Way standing at the gateway to the Burren. With its iconic castle Dun Guaire alongside its lovely bay, it represents all that is best in the West of Ireland. As can be seen from this report it has a rich and unique natural history. But it is rich in other ways too. Its two great festivals in spring and summer, the Cruinniú na mBád and the Fleadh na gCuach attract people from all over the world. For years the Galway hookers plied their trade with Connemara across Galway Bay and today they return as part of the Cruinniu celebrations. The town’s Heritage Trail tells of Kinvara’s fascinating and well-documented history in the context of the towns’ older buildings. There is much to enjoy in Kinvara. It is home to some of Ireland’s finest musicians and artists. Most nights there is a gig in at least one of the town’s ten pubs and bars while art exhibitions, literary events and other artistic ventures are a regular feature in Kinvara’s life. Kinvara also has a strong sporting tradition with a number of dynamic clubs in the area. The GAA club is very active at juvenile, intermediate and adult level in Hurling, Camogie and Football. Kinvara United is the local soccer club with mens, ladies , and girls and boys teams. There is also a ladies Hockey Club which has been enjoying success in recent years. The Kinvara bay Sailing Club has been afloat for over 10 years now. Running and cycling are both well represented in Kinvara and other organised sporting and leisure interests include Badminton, Aikido, bridge and yoga. All these are organised by the town’s local clubs and other organisations. Many of those although largely autonomous operate under the aegis and with the support of the Community Council. Tidy Town’s is amongst these and in recent years has made a huge improvement in the look and the feel of the town. But the Council also supports music from the Kinvara Area Music, (KAM), art exhibitions from Kinvara Area Visual Arts (KAVA) while associated local committees run the Cruinniu na mbad, and the Fleadh festivals and the local farmer’s market. KAVA is about to move into a permanent venue in what was the Court House and KAM supports and assists young local musicians. Recently formed is Kinvara Folklore Digital Archive (KFDA). This will be recording, collecting and preserving the town’s history. It is recording on video the reminiscences of older people, digitizing written records and filming for posterity life in KInvara today. It will also be assisting another new venture – a film club for teenagers. The Council itself built and runs along with a management committee of parents the local Children’s Centre providing care for children from 3 months of age to 12 years. It owns and administers the Community Centre. This is very well used – fully booked most weekday evenings providing a venue for activities ranging from dance for young children, a mother and baby group, keep fit classes, bingo, the Youth Club, the Scouts as well as regular one off events. It is used by Seamount College for physical training. Recently the building was refurbished at a cost 170,000 euro with grant aid of 110,000 from Galway Rural Development The Community has a long history of looking to its own interests and acting on its own behalf. For nearly two decades the Community has fought for a sewage works. Currently the town’s sewage goes directly into the bay. After a long and unremitting battle, plans and finance for this are now in place and hopefully it will be up and running within two years. The Kinvara Integrated Area Plan, the community's Bird box built by the Dolmen Centre vision of the town's future, was commissioned and organised by the Council drawing on the views and aspirations of all sections of the community by wide consultation in a series of meetings. It won the Irish Planning Institute award for participatory planning in 2008 and Kinvara was second in the only year that it entered (2006) the all-Ireland ‘Pride of Place’ awards. 1 The Nature of Kinvara Kinvara, located on Atlantic coast of South County Galway and the edge of the Burren has an extraordinarily rich natural heritage. To the South West is the awesome landscape of limestone rock with its unique flora, its wild life, caves and prehistoric sites of such unique importance that it is a proposed World Heritage Site. To the north is Kinvara Bay and to the northwest the shores of Inner Galway Bay. This is a world of sea and beach, salt lakes and lagoons, mud banks and salt marsh where its shoreline supports a great variety of water birds. Coastal Kinvara Kinvara benefits enormously from its coastal location and a range of interesting and important habitats and species are accessible from the centre of the village. Along the coast there are a wide variety of marine habitats. At low tide can be seen the seaweed covered rocks and shingle and gravel shores. At the end of the boreen leading down to Ballybranagan on the western side of the bay is a typical upper salt marsh with Autumn Colours, Catherine Cronin. Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0) most of the plants associated with them. Elsewhere there are mud banks, shingle and gravel banks and a sandy beach at Tracht best visited at low tide when you might see locals digging for clams. Traditionally seaweed has been harvested in Kinvara. It used to be bought ashore as a climin, raft of seaweed punted ashore by men using poles. At one time the trade in seaweed was an important part of Kinvara’s economy sold to be used in manufacture of perfume, cosmetics and medicine but it was and is mainly used as a fertiliser. Used as mulch, it is rich not only in nitrogen but in the trace elements that all plants need. After storms when it is tossed up along the shore, locals collect it to use on their gardens. The waters around Kinvara Bay are also important for shellfish aquaculture. Lagoons are saltwater ponds or lakes that are separated from the sea by some form of barrier such as a wall or gravel bank. They may also be fed by streams, groundwater so they may range from brackish to very saline water. They are special habitats as they support specialised plants such as widgeon grass and animals such as molluscs, worms and crustaceans that can survive in such an environment. There are several of these coastal lagoons around Kinvara Bay especially in Doorus and Aughinish. The coastline all around Kinvara Bay from Oranmore to Ballyvaughan is designated under European legislation as a Special Protection area (SPA) for birds. This is an area of huge ornithological importance. Here you find you can find breeding colonies of Cormorants, the Sandwich and Common Terns as well as the presence of the Red throated, Black Throated and Great Northern divers, golden plovers and Bar Tailed Godwits. Terns and the common gull are regulars around the inner bay. Other visitors 2 include lapwing, mallard, heron, Brent goose, shelduck and dunlin. Eelgrass, eaten by a wide variety of marine birds is also plentiful around the bay and is one of the reasons for their presence. Mute Swans nest along the shore and are common sight around the harbour. Near to Dunguaire castle there are breeding otters and seals that find sanctuary on the small islands in the bay and can sometimes be seen from or in and around the pier Kinvara Village and Countryside Inland from the coast there is a different world and another story to be told. Due to the karst limestone bedrock of the region, much of the freshwater actually moves underground emerging in places in temporary rivers and lakes. Kinvara bay is an estuary fed by an underground river.