In the context of the Nature Restoration Law it is absolutely essential that farmers are rewarded for the output of nature services that they produce, in the same way that they are remunerated for food products, director general of the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) Niall Ó Donnchú has said.

He said that farmers should have been remunerated when their farmland was originally designated.

“The output of nature products should have been valued and should have been remunerated. And that is something that we want to ensure happens into the future,” he told the Irish Farmers Journal this week.

The State body is “always in the market” for high nature value land with such properties attracting the NPWS straightaway, Ó Donnchú said.

“We’re always looking at land acquisitions. We’re always in the market for areas of high nature value that will add to the State’s national parks or nature reserve network. We’ve made no secret of the fact we’re actively looking at sites like the Conor Pass,” he said.

The NPWS concluded around 17 different land transactions last year on varying scales from the addition of 552ac at Dowth in Co Meath, which will become a new national park, to smaller, strategic additions, he said.

High nature value land

Ó Donnchú said that the property team within the NPWS is ambitious about what it wants to acquire, with the qualifier being that the land is of high nature value, contiguous ideally to national parks, designated or in need of intervention in terms of protection and unique from a natura standpoint.

However, he insisted that the State body was not in the market for every parcel of ground and definitely not for pure farmland.

“We want to do so [purchase land] in a way that’s strategic for us but also strategic for Ireland and not to exclude farming. That is never the intention.

“We’re not in the business at all of buying farmland, farmland that’s productive.

“We’re very conscious that we have some of the most unique natura sites that are quite unique to Europe,” he said.

Devalued land

He rejected the assertion by farmers that the NPWS was party to the devaluing of land values through the designation process.

“We absolutely don’t dictate land values. As a matter of fact, if anything, I can see that over the last two years land values have actually gone up.

“So really, I can’t subscribe to that idea that we devalue [land],” he said.

Activities requiring consent

Farmers on designated land must comply with a number of activities requiring consent (ARCs). This means, for example, if a farmer wanted to put up a fence or spread fertiliser or cut bushes, he or she would need to ask permission from the NPWS to do so.

The ARCs are complicated, Ó Donnchú admitted.

“We hear the farming community loudly and clearly around how challenging some of the ARCs can be.

“We have a team in place, we’re looking at clarifying the whole process around applying for ARCs, around demystifying it,” he said, adding that a guidance document is fairly close to finality.

When asked if he believes there will be land designated in future, separate to the country’s network of national parks, the director general was bullish.

“We don’t envisage that at all. It’s not in our plans. Geographic extensions are not in our plans. There may be qualifying interests added to some because nature is organic, it changes, habitats change,” he said. There will be new marine Special Protection Areas (SPAs) designated, but not any new ones on land, he said.

Dowth

The NPWS has just started the process of the master development plan for the lands it acquired in Dowth last year.

“That property has always been farmed in one guise or another. And we’re very conscious of that aspect of it. We acquired an incredible asset that UNESCO recognised in terms of the archaeology above and below the ground, and built heritage going back probably to the 17th century, if not before that,” he said. The land also has Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and SPA designations.

“We are going to continue to farm the component of it that has been farmed for nature. We acquired the research Devenish had undertaken there as well, the multi-sward research and the soil and productivity outcomes. We’re going to build on it,” he said.

The NPWS is actively looking at partnerships for the site and Ó Donnchú confirmed that the State body is in discussions with Teagasc for a plan for the lands.

LIFE programmes

Ó Donnchú revealed to the Irish Farmers Journal that the NPWS is to extend a range of LIFE projects. Such programmes include the Corncrake LIFE and The Living Bog projects.

“Some of our LIFE programmes will be coming to an end, and we’ve made a decision that LIFE is for life.

“So, we will be bringing those programmes mainstream and I think the farming community will welcome that. Because having made so much progress on some of those programmes, it’s an absolute shame if they stop.

“We have made the decision with the minister [of State for nature’s] support, that as LIFE programmes come to an end that they’re mainstreamed within the NPWS and we continue to fund them. If they’re delivering there’s no reason to stop them,” he said.