Leanne HOWARD
The Burren (from the Gaelic Bhoireann, meaning a stony or rocky place) is an extraordinary glacio-karstic limestone pavement landscape on the west coast of Ireland, facing the Atlantic Sea between the counties of Clare and Galway. A potential World Heritage site renowned for its distinctive and internationally significant cultural and natural heritage, the Burren is a superb example of a cultural landscape where interactions between humans and landscape have taken place for over 6,000 years. The Burren’s pastoral and cultural traditions have shaped the landscape and biodiversity over millennia. The transhumance tradition of the Burren is different to other parts of Ireland; whereas the dominant tradition is to move cattle to the mountain pastures in spring, in the Burren cattle were moved to the upland areas for the winter months given the limestone pavement provides a warm, dry, disease–free environment with calcium–rich vegetation resulting in healthy, sturdy animals. Winter grazing, an essential component of the Burren’s ecology, kept the shrubs and grasses in check allowing plants and wildflowers to thrive. However, traditional farming and land management practices are no longer economically sustainable and modern farming techniques have threatened this unique environment and its rare habitats.
The paper examines current contestations involving the various communities, heritage values, social factors, and economic pressures borne by the Burren, and solutions to preserving heritage values. Some Government backed initiatives and work by local community members are discussed. For example, the European Union funded BurrenLIFE project aims to work in partnership with farmers in actively ‘farming for conservation’ while proposing that the best protection for the Burren is to continue farming utilising sustainable, research–based land management practices and drawing on local experience and traditional knowledge.