Keeping farms safe for wildlife

The fieldscape along the road south from Louisburgh to the foot of Mweelrea has greatly changed in the past decade or so - most farmers would say for the better. Big tracts of rushy, cut-over bog have been drained and ploughed, dressed with shell-sand and grassed over. Rocky hillside has been cleared and sown with rye-grass; cut-out shapes of brilliant green tilt into the mountain.

New slatted sheds have brought sheep and cattle indoors. Silage girdled in plastic has ousted the last of the hay. The odd acres of oats, with their winter stubbles, have vanished, together with the potato ridges. And a score of new houses are spaced along the road, each carving a gap in bank and hedgerow (first pebbles, no doubt, of an avalanche).

Thus, on what used to be a rugged and undisturbed stretch of coastal moorland, we are catching up fast with the rest of the island. There's still enough rough land for a showing of curlews, larks and linnets, but the corncrake has a fitful finality (none this summer), lapwing nests are now lonely as their cry, and the yellowhammer, once flashing from every hedge, is following corn bunting and grey partridge into total retreat.

As farming intensifies, the story of Ireland's farmland birds is one of steady, sometimes dramatic, decline, charted with particular precision over the past 25 years. In the lowlands, loss of arable land and field margins, and the switch from springsown to autumn-sown grain, have hit the seed-eating species; grassland cultivation crushes lapwing nests; loss of cover has reduced the mice and shrews hunted by owls. In the uplands, so widely stripped of heather, red grouse have lost three-quarters of their range. As wetlands shrink, so do the numbers of nesting waders. Some of the declines are unexpected: not only curlew, wheatear, golden plover, but dipper and common sandpiper; not only lapwing and snipe, but kingfisher, sand martin, coot.

The trends emerge with clarity in a new publication that is specially welcome for its all-Ireland approach. Birds of Irish Farmland - Conservation Management Guidelines is produced jointly by John Murphy of BirdWatch Ireland and Anita Donaghy of RSPB Northern Ireland, and published by the RSPB. Birds are oblivious to borders, as these two groups have long acknowledged, and it is good to see the island biosphere incorporated in print in this way.

But while cattle in a Co Tyrone pasture browse within a page or two of cattle in Co Sligo, and hedges in Fermanagh face the Celtic field patterns of the Dingle Peninsula, the unsparing intensification of farming so obvious in the north has a clear message for the rest of the island: northern choughs and corncrakes are at their last ebb; curlew numbers have plunged.

The bright hope of the booklet is that some farmers, at least, will care enough about wildlife to want to reverse the trend: what is good for birds will also be good for butterflies, dragonflies, wildflowers and wild grasses, as the Irish Farmer's Journal's Angela Nugent points out in her foreword.

But just who are these farmers going to be? Many of the most urgent losses of habitat are happening at the margins of land-use. What would a small western farmer make of the guidelines for encouraging snipe? Here they are:

"Retain wet or damp areas of grassland, as these provide nest sites and feeding areas for adults and chicks. Create damp soil conditions by blocking selected drains. Around open water, create a mosaic of vegetation heights. Tussocky rushes, sedges and grasses provide valuable breeding sites, though rushes should not be allowed to become too dense.

"Do not cultivate or re-seed permanent pasture. In areas of damp grassland, graze with cattle to produce a tussocky sward. This creates suitable conditions for nesting. Reduce stocking numbers during the nesting season (early April to the end of June) in order to avoid trampling of nests and young."

And so on for the 13 threatened species given special treatment in the book. For the reed bunting, for example, provide small areas of winter stubble and cut river banks in alternate years; for choughs, outwinter cattle to provide the cow-pats for dung beetles; for skylarks, leave six weeks between successive silage cuts to allow for successful nesting, and keep winter stubbles with plenty of unsprayed weeds. Such prescriptions are perfectly sound, but do prompt speculation on where eco-friendly farming ends and enthusiastic wildlife-gardening begins. Fortunately, in the more problematic realm of small farms, such conservation strategies can be mediated through REPS, the Rural Environment Protection Scheme, whose advisers prevail upon farmers to at least leave "unimproved" wildlife habitats alone. In particular, the booklet's advice on the management of hedgerows, field margins, headlands and so on will help to make any farm a better place for wildlife.

For the more active land management the booklet aspires to, one must look, probably, to the new "organic" tribe of farmers who seek to work with nature, and the more sensitive spirits among bigger farmers and landowners. The booklet is available from BirdWatch Ireland, 8, Longford Place, Monkstown, Co Dublin, and the RSPB at Belvoir Park Forest, Belfast, BT8 4QT.

This is apple-munching and seed-saving time (vegetable seed, that is), and cross-border pollination will bear fruit at a "Conserving Apple Varieties and Seed Saving Day" at the Organic Centre at Rossinver, Co Leitrim, on Saturday next.

The Armagh Orchards Trust has been working with Irish Seed Saver Association and UCD in collecting and propagating Ireland's heirloom apples, and unknown varieties are still being discovered. The Trust's Peadar McNeice will join the Seed Savers at Rossinver, to demonstrate apple-grafting and identify mystery apples. The day costs £10 and you need to book - tel: 072-54338.