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Farmers joined forces with firefighters on the Sheep’s Head peninsula in west Cork for the first ever demonstration of controlled burning on the hills.
Some 20ac of gorse on Joe McCarthy’s land at Aughaleigue, Kilcrohane, above Bantry Bay was burned in the demonstration.
Among those involved were the Sheep’s Head Beaters, a local group of farmers who have set up a meitheal to help each other with the planned burning of their hill land.
“Wildfires are no good for anyone and this demonstration was an example of how to do a controlled burn in a safe way without any risk to people, property or livestock,” said group leader and IFA branch chair Jerry Daly.
Daly is strongly in favour of a planned rotation of controlled burning on the hills.
“In order to get paid for Department of Agriculture schemes like AEOS and GLAS, your land must qualify and to get sheep and cattle grazing on the hills, you must have the land control-burned every so often,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal.
The Sheep’s Head Beaters are part of a wider network, the Cork Wildfire Co-op Group (CWCG),which was set up in 2012 by Eugene Curran of the Forest Service and John Casey of Teagasc to tackle the number of wildfires occurring in the west Cork area.
The CWGP includes the Forest Service, the National Parks and Wildlife Service, An Garda Síochána, Fire Service, Community Alert, Teagasc, Cork County Council, Coíllte and the IFA.
“Wildfires consume more than just forests and bogland. They damage lands, farm infrastructure and grazing capacity, as well as potentially leaving farmers open to reductions in their BPS payments,” Teagasc adviser Casey said.
“Hill farmers have a responsibility to themselves to carry out burning in a manner which maximises the benefits to their farming enterprise, increasing their margins, while minimising risks to the land and the communities around them.”
Fire figures
Latest figures show that west Cork fire brigades attended to 142 land fires involving gorse, grass or forestry in 2016.
Most, some 124 fires, were in the period when burning is illegal, from 1 March to 31 August, while just 18 were in the permissible season.
National figures from the Department of the Environment show that Co Cork recorded the most fires in 2015, with fire brigades attending 478 separate land fires.
Co Kerry was next highest at 223 fires, followed by Galway (193) and Louth (169).
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