We are currently over-fishing the oceans. The deep sea habitat is also under threat from the crude and destructive methods of fishing that are so often used. The nets are huge and usually weighted down with heavy bolts. As they are dragged along the bottom of the ocean they rip everything in their paths and scoop up everything from the sea bed. These include corals and sponges and some of these are hundreds of years old. The final result is a totally destroyed marine environment that took hundreds of years to develop. Since none of this material has a commercial value for the fishermen it is simple dumped back into the ocean as bycatch.

It is forty years since the first New Zealand flatworms were first recorded in Ireland. The species Arthurdendyus Triangulates was first found in Northern Ireland in 1963 and came to be regarded as something of an exotic novelty in gardens around Belfast.

Human beings have been farming for 12,000 years and during the period vast amounts of knowledge and skills have been accumulated. In the last 100 years, however, big changes have occurred. Technological advances were perceived to be the solution to the problem of feeding the world’s rapidly rising population. Chemical would save the day. In the 1950s, the now banned chemical DDT was promoted in adverts depicting happy families with the slogan ‘DDT is good for me.’

Fears about the potential dangers of cross contamination of indigenous plants with GM crops have been realised.