Ecology

08/14/20 • 32 min

Connecting Through Heritage with Leitrim County Council

Contributors

Neil Foulkes has made a 30-year career out of hedge laying, and is an advocate for their maintenance. He knows all about the essential role hedgerows play in providing shelter and nourishment for wildlife in the county. He’s also in awe of their beauty, especially in Leitrim; and calls the Irish landscape a ‘wonder of the world.’

Kate Bismilla is an ecologist working with the Irish Breeding Curlew EIP, which has been set up to address the decline of breeding curlew in Ireland. The curlew is a bird that mates for life, and around its South Leitrim breeding grounds, Kate’s pioneering project works alongside farmers to help protect curlew pairs.

Annie Birtwistle and her family have farmed their plot of land at Battlebridge on the Leitrim-Roscommon border for 24 years. They’ve had great success in running a productive farm, while farming with conservational principles in mind. Annie’s family see themselves as ‘stewards of the land’; their farm is teeming with an abundance of habitats.

Contributors

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Musical Heritage

Contributors

Fionnuala Maxwell is a singer and teacher who has made it her mission to promote and recover Leitrim’s musical heritage. She finds the lyrics or music of often forgotten Leitrim songs in historical manuscripts or publications, and performs her own interpretations of them. In this episode she takes us through a song called ‘The Little Hills o’ Leitrim’ which she found in an old Irish-American newspaper.

Conor Ward is a fiddler living in Cootehall. He learned his craft in local céilí bands, where he was first introduced to the music of Leitrim. He has recently completed a masters on a musical manuscript found in the 1960s, which traces the fiddling tradition of Leitrim and Longford to one nineteenth century source: the style and teaching of Thomas ‘Blind’ Kiernan.