This article is from page 18 of the 2011-11-15 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
THE future of the Burren Farming for Conservation Project beyond 2013 is inextricably linked to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – with the future of the unique Burren landscape now tied to negotiations which will take place in Brussels.
With the entire grant funding of the project now coming from unspent SFP, any major change to the CAP could threaten the entire future of the project.
Despite this uncertainty however, project manager Brendan Dunford is hopeful that the project could be rolled our right across the Burren in the years to come. A total of 35 farm families applied to become Life Farmers in 2010 and it is though that this number has swelled following the success of the first two years of the project.
“My biggest regret is that we cannot accommodate all the farmers who want to be involved. So all that we can do for the time being is to do as good a job as we can with the farmers that we have and hopefully that will strengthen our position in the future to do more,” said Brendan.
“It is very much our vision that every farmer in the Burren who wants to farm for conservation would be available to do that. That is dependent on funding but the better that we do the better position we are in to get funding into the future.”
While scrub encroachment is often seen as the enemy of biodiversity in the Burren, according to Mr Dunford the key is to strike a balance between all the natural habitats that exist in the area and now allow any to dominate.
“The problem that we are dealing with now is that, because of the withdrawal of farming from some areas in the past thirty years, we are getting a big imbalance between the areas of encroaching scrub and the areas of well managed grassland. What we want to is to maintain a balance,” he said.
“Even with the work we are doing here, the amount of scrub encroachment exceeds the amount that we are able to remove each year. But in a way that is beside the point, scrub can turn into a great woodland itself and we are certainly not trying to eradicate it. It is about a balance, what we want to do is manage the grassland to maintain what is some of the most bio-diverse landscape in Europe and if scrub comes in on these areas we want to push it back out again.”