burren LIFE

Overview of Main Conservation Issues Being Addressed

The Project is a partnership-based 'Farming for Conservation' project. It is one of only six EU funded LIFE projects in Ireland and the only such project in Ireland geared specifically towards engaging farmers in actively 'farming for conservation' in priority habitat areas. It is a particularly significant project in national terms in that it is taking place in the Burren, Ireland's flagship heritage landscape. The priority habitats which feature prominently in the Burren, and which are the focus of this project include:

• Limestone pavement - a glacio-karstic ie. modelled by ice feature of limited distribution in Europe. In Ireland it is largely confined to the Burren region. Of a national total of c. 30,000ha for this habitat, it is estimated that 18,000ha or c.60% of the national total is included in the Project area. This is very high quality limestone pavement habitat, largely intact, with a wide array of interesting karst and karren features (grykes or joints and runnells or gutter-type featres). The pavement flora includes mountain avens (Dryas octopetala), wall lettuce (Mycelis muralis), wild thyme (Thymus praecox), burnet rose (Rosa pimpinellifolia), carline thistle (Carlina vulgaris), wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia), blue moor grass (Sesleria albicans), fescue grasses (Festuca spp.), helleborines (Epipactis spp.), and a rich array of calcicole ferns (Asplenium spp) and mosses (Breutalia chrysocoma, Ctenidium molluscum and Neckera crispa).
• Orchid-rich limestone grasslands (Festuco-Brometalia) are closely associated with the Burren in the Irish context, and the grasslands present represent c. 26% of the national cover of 6,000ha of this habitat. These grasslands within the Project area are of very high quality containing species such as blue moor grass, bird's-foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum), ladies bedstraw (Galium verum), eyebrights (Euphrasia spp.), yellow rattle (Rhinanthus minor), squinancywort (Asperula cynanchica), quaking grass (Briza media), devil's-bit scabious (Succisa pratensis) and mountain everlasting (Antennaria dioica). Within these grasslands, Spring Gentian (Gentiana verna), is found - sometimes in abundance. Orchid species include the frog orchid (Coeloglossum viride), bee orchid (Ophrys apifera), fly orchid (Ophrys insectifera), Irish orchid (Neotinea intacta) and spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza spp.) among others.
• A range of wetlands including turloughs (275 ha, c.9% of the national total), petrifying springs with tufa formations (a good proportion of the estimated national cover of 0.5 ha) and saw sedge Cladium fens (200 ha, c.8% of the national total for this habitat).

The scale, diversity, quality and uniqueness of these priority habitats in the Burren are internationally significant. However, they are threatened by a number of factors, largely related to recent changes in land management practices resulting in an imbalance in the traditional relationship between farming and the local Burren environment. These changes can be summarised under 'intensification and marginalisation'. Due to a combination of market and policy forces, as well as the availability of new technologies and external factors such as the strong off-farm economy, there has been a move by many of the remaining farmers towards more efficient 'modernised' farming systems in the Burren. This has contributed to the modification or neglect of the traditional extensive 'outwintering systems' which has shaped the Burren.

The result has been undergrazing or even abandonment of some areas with consequent scrub (mainly hazel Corylus avelanna and blackthorn Prunus spinosa) encroachment on priority habitats. Equally, the production and distribution of feedstuffs (particularly silage) into an intrinsically low-nutrient environment is also of some concern, particularly in terms of the impact on oligotrophic wetlands. The loss of farmers from the land, and the limited time available among those remaining (mostly working off-farm) is also an issue of concern, as is the impact of mass tourism on parts of this fragile environment.

Many of these issues arise from a lack of awareness as to the importance of the habitats of the Burren and the management practices that sustain them. This project will address these conservation issues - intensification, marginalisation and lack of awareness - over the next five years and in doing so, develop and support a new model for 'Conservation Agriculture' in the Burren, for the benefit of the people of the Burren and their rich heritage.