River monsters descend on the Glen

There’s some river monsters up in the Glen. Don’t believe us? Have a look this Sunday.

The Gleann a Phúca creative climate action project is hosting an educational, and potentially scary, River Monster Parade of giant human-sized replica water insects from 12- 1pm.

The parade, staged by the Friends of the Dripsey Rivers (FODR) community group, will showcase several ‘river monsters’ including a 6 metre-long giant green monster modelled on a specific green caddis fly larva found under the Dripsey Bridge one sunny summer day.Other slightly smaller replica river insects set to parade through the Glen on Sunday include the flattened mayfly larva and stonefly larva.

The FODR group grew out of an online course run by IRD Duhallow during the Covid pandemic.

Since then the members who always meet in rivers, and even had their AGM knee-deep in water, have spent a lot of time kick-sampling under bridges to assess the water quality and examine populations of freshwater life in the Dripsey River catchment area. Due to the fact the insects found are so small and hard to examine, the group started making larger, wearable costume versions of some of the ‘monsters’ enlarged to human size, and capable of running about both educating and scaring people!

Sunday’s monster parade in the Glen River Park is the first stage of the group’s Péist Returns project. The project is based on the legend of St Finbarre who banished a troublesome monster from the lake at Gougane Barra.

After the parade, from 1-2pm, attendees are invited to participate in citizen kick-sampling with the Gleann a Phúca volunteers, to examine the health and quality of the Glen River water. The group will also be testing the new Citizen Science Esker Box borrowed from the library and findings will be recorded for research purposes.

From 2-4pm, participants are invited to go on a botanical odyssey of the park with botanist Chelly O’Donovan and artists Spoon and Bloom.

Afterwards, participants will come together to collectively map the journey and their findings, recording and plotting distinctive species as well participants’ own special areas and treasures of the park.

Each of these Gleann a’ Phúca events is free to attend but participants are encouraged to reserve a space in advance on EventBrite.

See gleannaphuca.ie for more information.