Agri-environment schemes – benefiting biodiversity and the NI landscape

The Environmentally Sensitive Areas (ESA) and Countryside Management (CMS) schemes have delivered a wealth of environmental benefit and landscape enhancement since the first scheme was launched in Northern Ireland back in 1988.  

Both schemes aim to protect and enhance nationally and internationally important habitats, plants and animals through appropriate land management, recognising that it is farmers who are best equipped to carry out this management.

Most of our wildlife in Northern Ireland is dependent to some extent on agricultural management.  The potential for farmers to make positive as well as negative impacts on the countryside cannot be underestimated.  It is very important that the effectiveness of the schemes is measured in some way to make sure that the payments made each year represent good value for money and that there are clear and tangible benefits to the countryside and biodiversity.

Scheme benefits - In some cases the benefits can be clearly seen.  Many of us are now aware of the value to farmland birds of sowing wild bird cover crops or retaining stubble over the winter months.  We know too that planting small corners of native woodland provides nest sites and that unsprayed strips along cereal margins are havens for insects and small mammals.  These provide food for birds as wide ranging as wrens and barn owls.  We don’t need research to tell us these things but it is useful to be able to quantify the positive effects.  

Quantifying the benefits - We know for example that in the past 10 years significant lengths of hedgerow and dry-stone wall have been restored.  We can see evidence of this every day.  But research, in the form of scheme monitoring, which has been taking place since 1992 can tell us that the ESA scheme has benefited the condition of our hedges.  In 1995 landscape monitoring found that the majority of hedges in the ESAs were gappy.  In 1995 just 28 percent of field boundaries in the Sperrins ESA were considered to be complete.  By 2005 this figure had almost doubled with 55 percent of boundaries considered stockproof and complete.

In most cases monitoring shows that management according to scheme guidelines has had the effect of maintaining the condition of farm habitats, preventing any decline in quality. Some farm habitats have shown marked improvements in biodiversity under scheme management.  Woodlands managed under the ESA scheme in Fermanagh for example have shown an increase in ground cover plants such as wood anemone and bluebell. There was also more evidence of natural tree regeneration than in their non-participant counterparts. Recent monitoring of CMS participant sites has shown improvements in the condition of heather moorland previously classed as degraded.  Future monitoring will help establish whether this trend will continue.  It suggests at least that it may be possible to reverse serious declines in the condition of certain habitats. The heather coverage on ESA moorland throughout NI has increased on participant sites but perhaps more interestingly non-participant sites have shown increases in negative indicators such as mat grass because of high grazing levels.

2008 and beyond - Agri-environment schemes, like the countryside they seek to protect, are not static.  They have evolved considerably over the past 20 years and monitoring has helped refine them into the schemes we have today.

Just over 40 percent of the agricultural land area of Northern Ireland (more than 13,000 farmers) is currently under agri-environment agreement. It is more important than ever that we know that the schemes are working.  The work produced by the monitoring team each year provides quantifiable results that show the schemes continue to improve biodiversity on our farmland.

For further information about any aspects of agri-environment schemes contact Countryside Management Branch at your local DARD office.

The Agri-environment Monitoring Team surveying a species - rich meadow in the West Fermanagh and Erne Lakeland Environmentally Sensitive Area