A beach in Galway City was the home of a family of Dexter cows in 2024, to graze the headland east of Ballyloughane beach for several months as part of a project led by Galway City Council, working with a local farmer. Local schools and community groups were invited to participate in a programme to share information about this native Irish breed, farming, and its relationship to Irish biodiversityanimals and nature.
Where did this start?
Ballyloughane beach, Galway City.
Who started this action?
Galway City Council.
Some quick facts about the project
- Ballyloughane Beach was identified as a prime area for a project that would promote the growth of native wildflowers that are already within the wider area, and also safe nesting and feeding areas for coastal birds.
- Ballyloughane Beach is a City amenity and only 4km from Eyre Square.
- The meadows around the beach support unseen biodiversity underground – The large numbers and types of plant roots play a key role in storing organic carbon.
- Dexter cattle are a native Irish breed and are believed to the one of the oldest cattle breeds in Europe.
- Dexter Cattle are used for conservationprotecting nature and keeping it as it is grazing in many parts of Ireland. Their grazing habits support meadows to establish, with a variety of species, sizes and shapes of leaves.
- A ‘buaile’ is a cattle enclosure.
Highlights Click toggle ⊕ to see these
- The project produced greater numbers and types of wildflowers and grasses that can reduce the effect of the emissions from farm animals.
- These wildflowers and grasses make meadows, or communities of perennial herbaceousplants that die down to the ground each winter but the roots are still alive and send up new growth each year plants with a diverse range of root depths and leaf cover.
- How many differnent types of plant roots in a meadowis important in the storing carbon dioxide. High carbon habitats support biodiversity and provide a Nature based Solution (NbS) to removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
- Meadows can store 500% more carbon than fields of pure grass. By eating and trampling vegetation, dung and dead plant material becomes available to ground dwelling small animals and fungi that store carbon and recycle the minerals. In turn these are used by the roots of plants, shrubs and trees.
- A typical meadow can support thousands of different species including a vast number of bees, hoverflies, beetles, spiders, grasshoppers, butterflies, moths and worms. Pollinatorsinsects that help flowers make seeds - bees wasps and flies are just some of them are in decline because of a loss of habitats like meadows which contain the native wildflowers they need to survive.
Why this matters
Using natural approaches to solve nature’s problems is lower impact and usually better than unatural ways of doing things. The council biodiversity officer in Galway knew that just introducing a small native Irish family of cattle would make the fields around the beach richer and more attractive to both people and animals. This is an example of a Nature-based approach solving the problems of climate change and damage to the environment. It takes imagination and the support of the people in the area – in this case the farmer and the beach users.
SDG Alignment & Keywords Click toggle ⊕ to see these
- SDG 13: Climate Action,
- SDG 15: Life on land
Keywords: nature-based solution, water quality, biodiversity, climate change, farming, Galway.
Find Out More about the project
Buaile Bó, Galway City Council
Contact P. Kearney, biodiversity officer, Parks.Department@GalwayCity.ie
The Activists Take-Away
A nature-based solution takes some imagination: you have to think about what the best way to solve a problem is. But it often means that you have to make alliances with local stakeholderspeople that will be affected (good or bad) by a project.
Listen to this podcast to learn how the people of Mulranny use the best communications practice to make sure they build alliances within their community.
Sustainable development, and participative democracy.
Listen on…
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