BRIDE Project Farm Habitat Management Guidelines

Improve biodiversity in the Bride River Valley area of East Cork and West Waterford. The project produced a set of guidelines designed to be practical and manageable for farmers who want to improve biodiversity, water quality and carbon sequestration on their farms in the Bride Valley. However, they can be adapted to other farming areas to assist or guide farmers and advisors in selecting habitat measures to improve the environmental performance of their intensively managed lowland grassland farms. The ethos or principles underpinning the guidelines are simple. Included are: i) retain existing habitats rather than creating new ones as older habitats contain more wildlife than newly established ones; ii) networks of wildlife habitats are more ecologically valuable than isolated wildlife areas; iii) where possible, create linking corridors by planting/retaining hedges or keeping strips of long grass along the road verges; iv) land used for creating a new habitat should come from the productive part of the farm; v) Do not locate new wildlife habitats on existing wildlife habitats because this causes an overall loss of biodiversity. For example, planting woodland on a wetland or a scrubby farm area may ruin one habitat to create another. The guidelines seek to place a value on “waste” or non-productive land. Land that is not agriculturally productive can be used to counter the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss, and it can also be used to improve air and water quality. Now more than ever, there is a need to manage land for food production and a range of new ecosystem services, including biodiversity. The guidelines cover various farm habitats, from derelict buildings, farmyards, field margins, ponds, riparian buffer strips, wetlands and woodlands.