BRENDAN O'Malley was born in the house where he lives in Recess, in Connemara. He has a holding of 100 acres of blanket bog and drumlins and looks out on the rugged Maumturk Mountains through his kitchen window. He keeps sheep on 1,500 acres of commonage he shares with his brother Eugene.
His farm lies in an area which will become a natural heritage area under regulations due to be signed next month by the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Mr Higgins. In all probability, it will be designated a special area of conservation under the EU Habitats Directive.
About 70 per cent of the NHAs will also be designated as SACs, which are defined as "high priority places of wildlife value, where steps will be taken to avoid the deterioration of natural habitats and the habitats of species, as well as significant disturbance of the species for which the areas have been designated".
Like other farmers similarly affected, Mr O'Malley worries the NHAs and SACs will take away his birthright and reduce the value of his holding.
Conservation bodies, worried that much of the upland areas in Connemara and elsewhere have been badly damaged by overgrazing from sheep, want rapid progress in designating the already delayed conservation areas.
But Mr O'Malley, chairman of the Connemara branch of the IFA says farmers like himself have not been informed about the new arrangements. He wants more consultation before the project is concluded.
"Will you be actually able to farm in an area like this?" he asks, "or will you just be a cheque in the post farmer? People don't want that. They want to farm their land.
The Department says proposed NHAs will be publicly advertised and "every effort" will be made to contact individual landowners. "Each farmer will be provided with descriptions and maps of the areas proposed for designation, details of the restrictions in farming practices, if any, that arise as a result, and details of the appeals procedure," it says.
Compensation will be paid "for All reasonable actual losses" but there will be no blank cheques.
Compensation is being negotiated with the farming organisations, as is the provision of special payments for hardship cases and an incentive scheme to encourage farmers to farm in an environmentally sensitive manner.
Despite these assurances, Mr O'Malley says Connemara farmers fear the conservation areas will erode their ownership rights.
"They feel their right to own their own land is being eroded. At the moment here, you don't own a shooting right, you don't own a fishing right and you don't own the mineral rights to your land.
"Those are three rights that are gone, so all you basically have here, as a farmer in an area like this, is a grazing right. You get the top six inches of the ground. If that is taken away, what have you left?"
It is a thorny question which could develop into a major environmental controversy during 1997. The EU encouraged farmers to put the sheep on the hills which led to the overgrazing.
Now they see themselves as the victims of EU inspired measures to protect the environment, which they say are being imposed from above.
"We have no problem with destocking, or stuff like that, as long as people are able to farm. But what happens your land if you have the imposition of a special area of conservation? Is your land worth anything at all? Who will buy it, if you wish to sell?" he says.