Lough Neagh, the largest freshwater lake in the UK and Ireland, is the heart of a vast interconnected aquatic ecosystem, from its surrounding catchment area to the rivers which flow into it and flow out to the north coast.
In recent years, that heart has been under increasing pressure and, in 2023, an unprecedented blue-green algal bloom appeared, causing immense public interest and which was visible from space.
In this video, we meet Sorrel Lyall of BTO, Steven Fyffe of Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), and Ciara Laverty of Lough Neagh Partnership.
According to Steven, recent research has shown that the impacts of climate change could be a reason that the feature species Bewick’s Swan is stopping in other favourable locations in Europe along their migration route before they reach the UK and Ireland due to rising the raising of temperatures in winter.
Future trends will provide a picture of exactly what is being experienced.
Sorrel discusses how her job with BTO provides the perfect opportunity to observe the multitude of habitats around Lough Neagh throughout the year.
Although decades worth of data is required to provide a full picture, Sorrel speaks about how monitoring birds through monthly waterbird counts and Constant Effort Site (CES) bird ringing is invaluable for understanding how the wildlife of the Lough is faring.
Research provides the detail for analysing the information to tease apart the possible reasons for birds traveling to breed on Lough Neagh.
Ciara Laverty says that her job as Lough Neagh Ranger is her ‘dream job’. She says it’s hard to beat a sunrise bird survey as Lough Neagh is such a special place. The Constant Effort Site (CES) bird ringing project enables Lough Neagh Partnership to identify birds which may be caught later in another country or that might return next year from sub-Saharan Africa.
Ciara says that the longer the surveys are carried out, the more useful the data will be for years to come in determining trends.
Seeing birds caught last year returning this year to Lough Neagh’s shores in summer is described by Ciara as a ‘joy’.
The views and opinions on the subject of this video are that of the contributors.
