Conference tallis::celt

893.0. "Gold in Mayo" by TALLIS::DARCY () Wed Apr 17 1991 12:17

From: [email protected] (Tony Hurson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.celtic
Subject: Gold prospecting in western Ireland
Date: 15 Apr 91 18:17:22 GMT
Organization: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.; Austin, Texas

The following article appeared in the April 15th 1991 edition of The 
New York Times under the 'Journal' column, a series of roving 
reports that go off the beaten track:
                                                           

 DOO LOUGH JOURNAL: AT THE END OF THE RAINBOW, SICKLY FISH?
 ==========================================================

The sere, rocky mountains and peat meadows of this part of 
western Ireland look as unspoiled as they were 1,500 years ago
when St. Patrick is supposed to have climbed the peak now 
named for him to fast, pray and banish snakes.

Until recently, there have been only three ways of earning a 
livelihood in this rain-swept, wind-blown wilderness: grazing 
sheep, fishing for sea trout and salmon, and digging peat.

But prospectors have discovered gold up in the hills, after all
the centuries. Peter Mantle, a 38-year-old innkeeper whose 
livelihood depends on anglers who come to enjoy his fishing 
rights to Doo Lough and the nearby freshets that tumble down 
from the hills, is not alone in thinking it should be left in
the ground.

Though the find could be the largest in the history of Europe, 
it doesn't seem quite enough to turn Doo Lough into the Irish 
Klondike. All the prospectors have said so far is that they have 
identified 530,000 tons of ore with a content of six grams - 
less than one quarter of an ounce - of gold per ton. Fears of 
mountains of tailings and heavy metal runoff into the streams 
and ground of an austere and sacred landscape, have led the 
Energy Minister, Robert Molloy, to ban mining on Croagh Patrick
itself, on the narrow grounds of religious and cultural signif-
-icance.

                  FEAR FOR THE SEA TROUT

"We're frantically trying now to prove that St. Patrick fished
for salmon here on his way up to the mountain", Mr. Mantle joked,
but what he and others would really like to do is get the Ministry
of the Environment to declare the region an inviolable wilderness
preserve.

He and other fly-fishing enthusiasts fear that gold fever could be
a fatal blow to sea trout, which have nearly disappeared over the
past three years because of parasites thought to have been attracted
by commercial salmon farms in the bay just offshore.

The troubles began arriving by land and by sea shortly after Mr. 
Mantle bought his Delphi Lodge, just downstream from Doo Lough in 
County Galway.

"We were up fishing a stream one day in the winter of 1987 when we 
saw this chap panning for gold with what for all the world looked 
like a frying pan", Mr. Mantle recalled, still shaking his head with 
amazement.

"We though he was out of his mind when he told us he had found gold",
he said. "They backtracked the gold to the source rock and there does
appear to be a ridge of gold running right accross the top of the 
watershed."

                 OPERATION 'QUITE INVISBLE'

The Irish Goverment, always strapped for money in a country where 
unemployment runs close to 20 percent, holds the mineral rights to the
land, so those like Mr. Mantle who earn their daily bread from it have
mobilised to try to fight off the mining interests.

"It'll be tough, and I'm not sure we'll win", he said. "The prospectors
are finishing up their results now and will soon be making their case".

The prospecting is being done by a joint British-Irish venture, Andaman
Resources and Glencar Explorations PLC. "We haven't yet got to the stage
where we're ready to declare it a commercially exploitable proposition",
said Hugh McCullough, Glencar's managing director, in Dublin.

The final word is unlikely to come before the end of the year, Mr. Mc
Cullough said, but he dismissed Mr. Mantle's fears as ungrounded. "We're
up in the mountains, and the operation is really quite invisible", he 
said. "It couldn't be seen from any tourist road. Modern technology 
allows such developments to take place sensibly and safely, and all we 
want is the right to put our case forward."

A citizens' organisation called the Mayo Environmental Group has made 
some headway toward getting the Mayo County Council to ban all mining in
the region. But even if it does, Mr. Mantle and Mr. McCullough agreed,
such a ruling could easily be overturned.

                   CATCH FALLS OFF SHARPLY

Game fishing is a big money earner in the west of Ireland, but it has been
staggering since 1989, when sea trout runs into the region began to 
collapse.

It was as dramatic as the scenery hereabouts. Mr. Mantle's lodge fishery
took 2,150 sea trout in 1985, but only 309 in 1989. A little farther up
the coast in Newport, Kieran Thompson's Newport House fishery went from 
1,555 to 135 sea trout over the same period. Farther north and south along
the coast, nothing similar was happening. But between Galway Bay and Clew 
Bay, it was total disaster.

After a period of bafflement, the fishery owners began comparing notes.
The found that smolts, the immature sea trout that leave fresh water for 
the ocean to grow up were coming back upstream infested with tiny marine
parasites called sea lice. The few mature sea trout that did make their 
way back to spawn were also ravaged by them, suffering from skin lesions
and infections and looking scrawny.

Mr. Thompson said there had been no sign of recovery yet this year, though
salmon, which have been far less severely affected than sea trout, have 
kept attracting the fly-fishing enthusiasts.

                    'ACTION GROUP' IS FORMED

He and others formed a "sea trout action group" to study the cause of the 
problem, and at the end of January issued a report that blamed the 24 
commercial salmon farms in the shallow tidal estuaries in the affected 
area.

The fish pens where the salmon are raised made them easy prey for sea lice,
according to their theory, and the parasites multiplied so explosively that
they now routinely overwhelm the sea trout smolts even before they can get
out to sea. 

The Goverment-financed Western Regional Fisheries Board in Galway backs this
explanation. "We are fairly convinced of the strong correlation between 
salmon farms and the infestation of sea lice in wild fish", said Michael 
Kennedy, the statutory body's manager.

It isn't clear what, if anything, will be done about the salmon farms, an
important source of income and employment in a depressed area. "I thought I
was buying a quiet and easy lifestyle", Mr. Mantle said with a sigh.

                     --- end of article ---
                    
Tony Hurson, Advanced Micro Devices, Austin, Texas.

    It would be shameful if gold mining were to be allowed in Doolough. Not
    only that, be it would also be stupid. 
    
    The main argument in favour is economic - as one of the brothers who
    own land there said "The scenery never put bread on my table." Not yet,
    no. Were the mining to go ahead, a lot of money would be spent buying
    rights and then there would be a period of employment. But mining is a
    transient industry - there will only be so much gold in the ground and
    when that has gone what will be left. A scarred landscape that holds no
    attraction for anybody.
    
    Government policy in the last number of years has been to promote and
    encourage tourism. And there is a lot of potential in that. Given the
    concern about the cancerous effects of the Sun, people are starting to
    turn away from the traditional two weeks in the Costa del Sol or
    wherever. Our climate could never match that, but we do offer a chance
    for people to "get away from it all." And where better than in the
    Doolough Valley? Latest figures from Bord Failte show that Europeans
    account for a growing percentage of visitors to this country. They come
    here to travel around, to get out into the countryside and to have a
    few pints. They aren't going to come all this way to see another mining
    tip. Catering for the European market will, I believe, encourage the
    home holiday market, a sector that has been badly neglected over that
    last number of years. The potential is there in Tourism to provide the
    employment and economic boost to the area - without spoiling the
    landscape. Not only that, but it would also prove a better one in the
    long-term. 
    
    I don't see this as just an economic issue - Doolough is also a
    reminder of the famine that swept this country 150 years ago. There are
    also questions about quality of life, land use etc that this touches
    on. However, economics is the main argument put forward by the mining
    interests but I believe there is a greater economic argument in favour
    of leaving things as they are.
    
    jimmy

    As someone who comes from West Mayo (Newport to be exact), I also strongly
    oppose any mining operation in that area. I have a lot of relatives and
    friends who live in the Louisburgh area and most oppose the miners.
    They understand quite well that the destruction of this area is not
    justified to make a few greedy people rich !
    
    There's very strong opposition generally in Mayo, and I'm sure this
    fact isn't lost on the Minister for the Environment, Padraic Flynn.
    He's a TD for the West Mayo constituency, and it would be political
    suicide for him to even be seen to allow this to progress any further.
    
    Some of the local County Councillors and other "interested parties" have 
    proposed that limited mining operations be allowed, provided that the 
    environment be protected ! This would seem to be a very contradictory (and 
    unworkable) stance and puts into question whose interests these people
    really represent ... 
    
	Des.