Hen harrier land designation has been a contentious issue for farmers since it was brought in. The designation spans nine counties and affects 3,860 farmers. The idea of creating a Locally Led Agri-Environmental Scheme (LLAES) that would benefit both the protected bird and the farmer is one that has been floated among a number of farming groups.

While it is expected that the Department will advertise the tender for a specific LLAES in these areas very soon, it has not happened yet.

The IFA has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, to ensure that the €70m allocated to LLAES in the 2014-2020 RDP will be honoured in full. At an IFA meeting of hen harrier farmers held in Killaloe in early February, the Department of Agriculture indicated that the tender process to implement the LLAES would begin shortly.

However, in a statement to the Irish Farmers Journal, the Department said that the “European Commission has yet to approve the locally led measure and no RFT can issue until that approval comes through”.

The Slieve Aughty Farming Group has drafted a five-year LLAES with the following objectives:

“There are 1,600 farmers in the Slieve Aughties,” said Denis Tuohy, coordinator of the Slieve Aughty Farming Group. “The main thing for farmers is that the land has been devalued and, as a result, some can’t get a loan from the bank.”

He outlined a number of issues farmers have as a result of the designation that force them into going over and above efforts of those on undesignated land. For example, if a farmer wants to install a slurry tank, they must have ecology reports completed at their own cost.

“No compensation has been received for land designation since the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) scheme ended. Farmers would like to receive compensation, but it will now have to come in the form of an LLAES,” added Tuohy.

As is the case with many of the locally led schemes, undergrazing is threatening the biodiversity associated with open-grazed upland habitats. This not only affects the hen harrier’s habitat, but also those of smaller birds that the hen harrier preys upon, reducing food availability for the hen harrier.

The under-grazing problem is caused by continuing reductions in the number of livestock following decoupling of CAP subsidies from production.

The Slieve Aughty Farming Group’s proposal combats this by including shepherding, the creation of wildlife headlands, use of traditional breeds for grazing management and controlled burning to help combat the under-grazing problem.

The group unanimously supports a return to an annual system of controlled hill area burning. The group said that if burning is done in a controlled and managed way, it has the potential to benefit the depressed Red Grouse population. They also believe that it will minimise the damage caused by maliciously started wildfires.

Interestingly, the Slieve Aughty group proposal uses a tiered structure similar to that used in GLAS. Tier one includes nest protection and predator control; providing feed for small birds using grit stations, feed stations and honey pot crops; habitat and water management.

Tier two covers things such as firebreak headlands, fencing, wildlife ponds and access issues, while tier three looks at deer control, heritage sites and a farmland bird survey.

“A lot of the actions are farmer-based, but community actions can be added such as building public walkways,” said Tuohy. “Any farmer who has seen our scheme understands it; we’ve sent it to all the farm organisations who have endorsed it.”

Liam O’Keeffe is a dairy farmer and AI technician from Ballydesmond, west Cork. “From a farmer point of view, we just hope that it [LLAES] will be successful for the farmer and the hen harrier,” said O’Keeffe, who is also chair of the Irish Farmers of Designated Lands (IFDL). “It’s early days. Our only focus at the moment is that it is a success. It is going to be no good for the farmer or the hen harrier to run a five-year scheme and it doesn’t work for anyone.”

At the moment, farmers are unsure of what will be made available under the Rural Development Programme (RDP), but they feel that it will have a similar structure to that used in the Burren. “We’ve been told that it will be a similar payment to GLAS,” he said. “I imagine it will be much more focused on predator control, increasing small bird population and I suppose there will be a certain element of ground management.”

Any LLAES payment would only be given as a result of work completed over and above what measures under GLAS.

However, O’Keeffe does not envisage that a scheme could solve the issue of land devaluation in designated areas. He has found that younger, more progressive farmers, had tried selling some poorer areas of their designated ground and found that it was essentially worthless. “Farmers need to be able derive an income off the land,” said O’Keeffe. “The hen harrier won’t be able to survive if land is abandoned. It’s a cycle. If you break the cycle, that’s not going to work.”

However, it is not a case of shooting all the predators, in some cases wiping them out can make them come back stronger. So, O’Keeffe suggests that castrating male foxes could be one option. Either way, training will have to be involved in any potential scheme, both for farmers and planners.

“If the young aren’t surviving, then that’s the first step, to stop the predators from taking them. You can’t have a payment for catching a predator and every farmer goes out and catches the same one. There has to be group management of certain areas to make sure the right predators are targeted and that they are all targeted.”

The question is whether an LLAES is the right approach to solving issues in designated areas. “Land devaluation is still a big issue that a lot of anger developed over and it’s hard to change people’s thinking to be positive about a scheme coming out,” said O’Keeffe. “There’s going to be a lot of training involved between training planners and farmers, especially if it comes down to predator control, which most farmers wouldn’t be used to at all.”