My Department recognises the importance of hedgerows and woodland habitats and their roles in biodiversity, agricultural management and potential carbon sequestration.
Hedgerows are an important feature of the Irish landscape with a network estimated in excess of 300,000 km, providing multiple benefits such as: a distinctive character, important for wildlife, a barrier and shelter for livestock, as well as acting as important carbon stores. As such, they are recognised as valuable landscape features under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) and thus are eligible for BPS payments. It is also recognised that such features must be appropriately managed and maintained by appropriate trimming of hedgerows to keep them in optimum condition, both as field boundary features and to help maintain the optimum structure and thickness to encourage bird nesting etc., and best practice prevails where this is done as part of an appropriate cutting rotation.
Their importance is further recognised through the inclusion of a number of hedgerow specific actions within the GLAS (Agri-environment Scheme under pillar II) where 7,627 farmers have committed to planting an additional 1,298 km of new hedges. These new hedges must be planted by 31 March 2017. In addition, farmers in GLAS can select the action of coppicing of hedges and/or laying of hedges which seek to improve the biodiversity value of escaped or abandoned hedges.
Based on the research article Valuing the C sequestration potential for European agriculture from Aerstens, Nocker and Gobin (2013) it could be estimated that new hedges planted in GLAS could sequester 4858 tonnes of CO2 per year.
The new LULUCF flexibility in the 2030 effort sharing regulation proposals offers opportunities to capture these credits in line with the LULUCF decision 2013 but in reality this is quite small against agri-emission approaching 20 mt.
In contrast, unmaintained hedges grow tall and become gappy at the base, becoming less useful for wildlife and as a landscape feature. Similarly, burning of growing vegetation can be an important land management tool in certain situations, where fire is used as a means to control scrub or to help improve cultivated land or as a means to develop and maintain fire breaks to protect forestry plantations and mitigating the risk of larger landscape scale fires, especially to put vital fire breaks in place to protect wider upland landscapes and forestry plantations. Thus, well timed and controlled burning activities can lead to an overall reduction in fire risk and prevent even larger wildfires occurring, which can offer farmers increased flexibility to carry out necessary land management activities.
