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Lochanna Beo calls for local action to protect lakes
Community network Lochanna Beo is urging residents, landowners, and businesses across the Killarney Valley to adopt chemical-free practices to safeguard local water quality and wildlife.
Operating within the Kerry Biosphere, the group shares ideas to enhance regional biodiversity, pointing to everyday choices in gardens and private lands as key factors in water health.
The appeal highlights growing environmental concerns around standard herbicides and chemical controls, such as weedkillers containing glyphosate or commercial slug pellets.
Lochanna Beo says that simple changes, such as adopting natural slug barriers or chemical-free garden maintenance, directly protect hedgehogs, essential insect populations, and native birds.
Valerie Harrington of Lochanna Beo stressed that community-wide action is vital alongside wider infrastructural demands.
"We are all well aware at this stage of some of the major infrastructural problems we have in Killarney like our overwhelmed sewage treatment facility and problematic stormwater overflows and misconnections, as well as multiple issues with invasive species," Harrington said.
"However, we can all do our bit to try to implement safer, kinder and healthier practices in our gardens and surrounding lands. Chemical interference in our landscape is yet another cultural practice which we need to amend in a radical way. Lochanna Beo continues to try to bring together ALL stakeholders in the Killarney valley area to introduce best practice in all areas related to the environment, to the benefit of all of us living here."

