South Dublin Branch News

REPS to fund seed for birds. An EU scheme offering up to €1300 a year for growing seed for endangered birds on their lands is being offered to Irish farmers under the new revised rules of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS III)

According to Ms Catherine Keena, a Teagasc environmental expert helping to promote the scheme, farmers who opt to grow a mix of tillage crops on 2.5 hectares of their land can gain €1300 each year. "Tillage growing in Ireland is now very concentrated and covers only 8 per cent of the land area," she said. "As a result, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of birds which live on cereal crops and, for instance, the number of yellowhammers in the west have fallen to practically nil," she said. It would involve payments for growing two crops, such as linseed and oats or kale, with another crop. "They must be sowed in three different plots and not be harvested and should be left in the ground so the birds can feed off them," she said. For this, she said, farmers would be paid €700 per hectare for the first hectare, €400 for the second hectare and €200 for the other portion. "It is very attractive to farmers and I suspect there will be a big take-up, firstly for the money but later for the interest I know farmers have in wildlife," she said. She said the scheme would benefit all the smaller birds which have been under severe pressure as levels of cereal growing continue to fall or become concentrated in the east and south. There was also support for it from beekeepers and from the National Association of Regional Game Councils. She said there was also increasing interest in the scheme to grow endangered species of Irish apple trees which was included in the new REPS package. Farmers would be paid €150 a year for growing a limited number of endangered trees, she said. The Seed Savers Society in Co Clare has 70 species of Irish apple trees available for the scheme. SEAN MAC CONNELL, the Irish Times, 04/11/2004