February 2016 71
ENVIRONMENT
Hedgemony
Humphreys does Irish Farmers
Association’s will on hedge-cutting
‘T
was the night before Christmas, and
the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the
Gaeltacht was beavering away looking
for ways to ensure that no creature was stirring.
Especially not a mouse.
On 23rd December last year, in the political
dead of night, the Minister charged with pro-
tecting natural heritage announced a plan to
make destroying it even easier for farmers.
Heather Humphreys - who lives on a farm, is
married to a farmer, and whose brother is the
Ulster/North Leinster Regional Chairman of the
Irish Farmers Association - took the regressive
decision to weaken Section
40 of the Wildlife Act, which
deals with the cutting of
hedgerows and burning of
uplands, on the basis that
doing so “will help to address
some of the challenges faced
by those living in rural
areas”. She didn’t address rural people whose
challenges are that they actually like hedges
and uplands.
An already flimsy piece of environmental leg-
islation and notoriously difficult to enforce,
Section 40 of the Wildlife Act, 1976 and the sub-
sequent Wildlife (Amendment) Act, 2000 ban
cutting and burning between March 1st and
August 31st on the well-evidenced grounds that
this is the time of year when the birds - including
endangered species such as curlew, yellowham
-
mer, linnet and greenfinch - have their birdy
babies. The legislation does make provisions to
accommodate summer cutting for health and
safety reasons (ie on dangerous stretches of
road) and in "the ordinary course" of agriculture
or forestry. Humphreys, however, contends that
this is not, farmers are finding, enough.
“I want to strike a balance here”, she said, in
a press release that neglected to mention the
enormous imbalance that already exists in
favour of agriculture over nature. “While hedge-
rows and upland areas are very important in
terms of wildlife habitat, they also need to be
managed in the interests of both farming and
biodiversity”.
That biodiversity is a
prerequisite for farming
seems to elude the Min-
ister. Nevertheless, for
what it's worth, last
month, for example, an
international team of
researchers (including
Trinity College Dublin's Yvonne Buckley) proved
for the first time that biodiversity "strongly and
consistently" enhances productivity. In addi-
tion, hedgerows and uplands are known to
improve rainwater attenuation and filtration,
mitigate flooding, harbour the species that con-
trol pests and provide important foraging for
crop pollinators such as bees (a third of which
are threatened in Ireland). They sequester
carbon, support soil fertility, provide resilience
to soil erosion and assimilate the nutrients in
agricultural run-off. All that tedious old natural-
balance stuff. The benefits are provided by the
natural world to farmers for free,
despite the fact that the envi-
ronmental cost of farming
remains unpaid (according to a
2015 FAO report, the unassaila-
ble Irish beef industry alone has
racked up debts of at least
$15bn in environmental
destruction).
What might not be lost on her,
however, are the 15,000 citizen
signatures which oppose the
measures. A petition launched
by Birdwatch Ireland, An Taisce,
the Irish Wildlife Trust and the Hedgelaying Asso-
ciation of Ireland has shown that healthy uplands
and hedgerows and the biodiversity they sup
-
port are beloved by more people than might have
been expected, and that a freshly-slaughtered
one at the height of summer is something a lot
of people, though perhaps no-one the Minister
ever meets, don't want to see.
Nonetheless, the proposed changes will be
included in the Heritage Bill 2015 on a "pilot"
basis, for two years. According to the DAHG
website:
•
"Managed hedge cutting will be allowed,
under strict criteria, during August to help
ensure issues such as overgrown hedges
affecting roads can be tackled.
•
Power will also be given to the Minister to
allow for controlled burning in certain areas
around the country, to be specified by the
Minister, during March, should it be neces-
sary, for example, due to adverse weather
conditions”.
No detail has yet been provided on the "strict
criteria" and no provisions for the effective
monitoring or enforcement of these measures
have been mentioned.
To Humphreys and her ag-mates, hedgerows
are the annoying prickly bits of brown and
green between the luscious fields of monocul-
ture through which Oscar nominees frolic in
hazy late-summer sun. Like the overgrown
fringes of small children, these superfluous
strips of deficit require meticulous and regular
trimming in order to avoid negative comment
on their unkemptness.
The atavistic and visceral commitment to
'tidiness' and post-Victorian standards of natu-
ral beauty is the exact opposite of what is
needed for an environment that is robust
enough to support an ever-intensifying agricul-
tural system and resilient enough to absorb the
environmental impact it produces. The 'dog-
whistle' call from IFA Environment Chairman,
Harold Kingston, for "a workable outcome" has
as so often been met with a grovelling response
that works for farmers only, in the short-term.
by Michael Smith
Heather Humphreys being persuaded
Saoirse: no hedgerows (from a greenwashing ad for Origin Green/Bord Bia)
Hedge cutting will
be allowed in August,
and controlled
burning in March

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