CHANGES TO the single payments scheme for farmers are contributing to wildfires which have devastated thousands of hectares of countryside, according to 19 environmental groups.
They have written to Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith claiming the changes mean there is now an economic incentive for farmers to burn scrubland. Forestry worth millions of euro has been destroyed in the last six weeks and there has been untold damage to birdlife recovering after the very severe winter.
The letter said new rules require areas of scrub and parts of hedgerows growing into fields to be removed or marked on a farmers’s application and excluded from payments.
“The farmers have been warned that aerial photography and satellite images will be used in the inspections required by the European Commission,” said the letter. The environmentalists asked the Minister to ensure the Forest Service and Department of Agriculture single payments unit work together to promote the management of these scrub areas, transferring them from single payments to forestry premiums.
“Scrub is a transitional woodland that is recognised as part of the national forestry inventory, occupying as much as 15 per cent of some counties’ forestry areas,” the letter continued.
“It provides a vital sanctuary for wildlife, a carbon store, and a potential source of renewable fuel.
“These scrub woods are composed of broadleaf trees which do not burn and can, in fact, protect dwellings from these devastating conflagrations,” it said.
‘While there may be many reasons for this year’s wildfires, the economic incentive for farmers to use burning as a land management tool must be ended – while still protecting farmer’s incomes,” the letter stated.