Columnists - West Cork People

Unwelcome animal immigrants

Dr Jeremy A. Dorman October, 2025

There are alien animals living wild all over the world – hippopotamuses in Colombia, camels in Australia, stoats in New Zealand, Burmese pythons in Florida. There are parakeets in England, slow worms in the Burren and wallabies in the Irish Sea. And now we have hornets in Cork. There are […]

When Russia had an American colony – and lost it

Kieran Doyle October, 2025

Six thousand miles away in the tiny Alaskan town of Sitka (formerly New Archangel – named after a Russian city), a place only accessible by boat or sea plane, much to the disgust of the local indigenous population, a statue of a Russian was erected on the town square in […]

Awakening to your body with Pilates

Lorraine Dufficey September, 2025

For this issue, I’m writing in my capacity as a classically-trained Pilates teacher with over 20 years’ experience teaching in West Cork. I believe everyone can benefit from a good Pilates practice. For me one of the most important aspects of Pilates is that it is a mind/body modality, meaning […]

Aubergine octopus

Karen Austin September, 2025

We have a fantastic aubergine colony with very productive slim fruits growing in our tunnel. We grow a variety called ‘long purple’, which are obviously happy where they are, as we pick from July through to the end of October and each week we harvest two or three aubergines from […]

The song of the humpback whale

Dr Jeremy A. Dorman September, 2025

The American zoologist Roger Payne died in June this year. He was the first person to study the sounds made by humpback whales. In 1967, in Bermuda, he met an engineer working for the US navy using underwater microphones to listen for Russian submarines; sometimes other, very peculiar noises were […]

Future of West Cork’s climate action hub uncertain as CECAS faces loss of Myross Wood home

Fiona Hayes September, 2025

The latest World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Report forecasts that there is a 70 per cent chance the average temperature over the entire 2025-2029 period will be more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That means we will have to work extremely hard to meet the Paris accord and this requires […]

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