Burren

Burren National Park was established in 1991 in County Clare, in western Ireland, and at some 15 km² it is one of the smallest national parks in the country. It protects a part of the Burren region, which is far more extensive.

The landscape is startlingly bare: expanses of exposed Carboniferous limestone, polished by ice and then dissolved by rain into a pavement of blocks separated by deep fissures, the grikes. There is hardly any soil, no trees and no surface watercourses, because everything drains into a highly developed karst with caves and underground rivers.

On that apparent sterility grows one of the most distinctive floras in Europe. In the fissures, sheltered from the wind and with a stable microclimate, arctic and alpine species such as the spring gentian live alongside Mediterranean plants such as the rockrose, together with numerous orchids, a combination found nowhere else on the continent and explained by the mildness of the oceanic climate and the area's particular post-glacial history. Traditional winterage, in which cattle are moved up to the high ground in winter rather than in summer, is what keeps that habitat open, and its abandonment is the main threat. The Burren also preserves an extraordinary density of megalithic monuments and ringforts.