Conservation grazing is the use of grazing animals to maintain and enhance biodiversity.

It has many benefits, including increasing the use of traditional breeds, encouraging optimal management of some of our most vulnerable habitats and promoting sustainable farming practices.

It is also an important tool for managing habitats and involves the use of grazing animals to both maintain and enhance biodiversity.

It focuses on semi-natural landscapes with grazing by domestic animals. These semi-natural landscapes include dunes, uplands, orchards, woodlands, heaths and grassland.

Schemes such as the European Innovation Partnership for Agriculture Productivity and Sustainability (EIP-AGRI) are encouraging the use of innovative solutions to tackle the challenges facing the agri-food sector and the rural economy.

Conservation grazing and the use of Ireland’s traditional breeds can contribute to these solutions.

Why use grazing for conservation?

Many of our semi-natural habitats have been developed through grazing and some habitats benefit from grazing in order to maintain open structure. In some cases, grazing for conservation may be focused on a certain habitat or species.

Cattle that are used for conservation grazing include breeds such as the Shorthorn, Belted Galloway, Dexter, Kerry and Irish Moiled.

By choosing traditional breeds which are smaller, it is possible to graze sensitive habitats with less impacts from trampling. Sheep are also widely used.

Different animals have different physical attributes which have impacts on biodiversity

These grazers impact on the habitats in many ways, including selective defoliation, poaching and leaving dung and urine behind. These affect many ecosystem processes, such as productivity and enhance distribution of nutrients.

Different animals have different physical attributes which have impacts on biodiversity. These physical differences include in grazing behaviour. These differences in the ability to be selective affects sward characteristics and biodiversity.

Selective feeders

For example, sheep are dominant herbivores in upland areas. They have small mouths with curved incisors, which mean they are very selective feeders.

They graze close to the ground and choose the more desirable parts of the plants. They have a better ability to select high-quality parts of plants such as flowers, pods and young shoots.

In comparison, cattle use their tongues and dental pad when grazing. They pull tufts of vegetation and therefore are not very selective grazers.

Wet grassland was selected most and the cattle appeared to target the purple moor grass most

This means that they are beneficial in upland areas to control upland grasses such as purple moor grass.

An example of this is conservation grazing in Kerry. The site, on the Dingle Peninsula is grazed with 30 Dexter cattle from July to September. The cattle are GPS tracked so their habitat selection can be studied.

It was found that wet grassland was selected most and the cattle appeared to target the purple moor grass most.