Burning..

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120302964#Comment_120302964

how do these fires start?

SouthWesterly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120304810#Comment_120304810

You'd have to ask the council that question 😁

alps

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120304843#Comment_120304843

It's just you said that it was at no cost to the farmer, so I was wondering if that was correct.

magicbastarder

they'd need proof the farmer started the fire to charge the farmer, i assume?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120304810#Comment_120304810

You're assuming the landowner started it, s/he/they may be as much a victim in it as any.

monseiur

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120303799#Comment_120303799

Agree 100% weiss. Get rid of all the sheep and import all lamb meat from New Zealand - zero carbon footprint 😊 While you're at it get rid of all cattle and import all beef from Brazil, sure they just slash & burn the Amazon Rain Forest (said to be the lungs of our planet) and the more beef Europe buys the more acres they must burn to satisfy the world's insatiable need for food.....Eliminate all farmers and country living folk and force them to move to big cities - loads of houses available, zero congestion issues, zero anti social & drugs issues etc. etc. great place to raise a family ...Some green folk are so blinkered it's a miracle they can see at all.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305002#Comment_120305002

so it's ok to slash and burn ireland for the sake of meat? we export most of our lamb and 90% of our beef and dairy, why would we need to import any if we produced a bit less for the sake of having a bit more natural land on the island? it's particularly annoying that farmers dump their sheep all over our national parks too, land that is supposed to belong to everyone, land that is destroyed by farmers so they can export meat to other countries.

magicbastarder

from a teagasc page:

The Irish Hill Sheep sector plays an important role in the economic health of rural economies and the maintenance of the natural landscape in many of Ireland’s most scenic areas.

i could rewrite that - 'subsidies to hill sheep farmers play an important role in the economic health of rural communities'. hill sheep farmers, on average, earn less than the subsidies they get. they're being paid to lose money.

'and the maintenance of the natural landscape' - at least the author is a comedian.

https://www.teagasc.ie/publications/2020/the-hill-sheep-sector-in-ireland.php

White Clover

The noisy crowd have arrived on this thread in earnest. Plenty of farm land for sale up and down the country which they are entitled to bid on and buy. They can then just leave it to nature as they so wish.

Why don't they do this instead of trying to tell other property owners what to do?

davidk1394

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305047#Comment_120305047

Name one place that's overgrazed by sheep in this country? If anything it's under grazed because hill farmers were forced to de-stock in the early 2000s. You may have your wish though as no young person wants to be a hill farmer.

older by the day

Candles in a sod of turf often started fires in hills around here, while the farmer was in the pub a couple of hours

Thelonious Monk

...

tanko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305108#Comment_120305108

Your lot would rather cover the country in data centres.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305259#Comment_120305259

yes, that's it. either cover the island in data centres and concrete or have sheep absolutely everywhere.

yosemitesam1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305131#Comment_120305131

An awful lot of hills were overstocked in the past. Lots still bare the scars. It was purely for farming subsidies that stocking rates ever were as high as they were. Animals and land both suffered.

Cody montana

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305259#Comment_120305259

what does this even mean?

magicbastarder

simple ad hominem, i guess?

Furze99

Done properly, it's part and parcel of how hill farmers manage grazing or estates manage lands for grouse shooting.

It's the reckless and uncontrolled burning that is disgraceful. Lads setting burns and then 'disappearing', though who was involved would be known. Having no plan to limit the spread etc. Cowboy mentality that needs to be stamped out by really heavy fines and prison for repeats. Did I hear a chap from NPWS saying only a handful fined last year and then for €5K? Fines of €50K and more would soon focus the minds.

josip

Love these threads 🙂. Although I'm originally from the country, I've lived more of my life in the big city. I've dagged and dipped sheep and worked on servers in datacentres; just not at the same time. Give me the loneliness of the Sperrins, the Antrim Hills or the Knockmealdowns any day over Blanch/Liffey Valley/Dundrum. But I'm only a tourist there, passing through, not having to earn my livelihood from it or provide for my family. I'm not a big fan of sheep and would have blamed them for the state of our mountains. Thanks to this thread, I now see that at least some of that was misplaced. I would like to see a bit more native planting on our uplands, be it birch or scots pine or whatever. Most of that landscape looks fierce bleak.

magicbastarder

unless they can identify the culprits, it's not possible to punish them, certainly not in a court.

Absolutely untrue that it is impossible to grow oak or native trees on most of our hills. Scree slopes above 500m maybe only dwarf shrubs and herbs, and trees won't grow in the remaining undestroyed blanket bog. Have grown and monitored native trees all over Ireland

Temperate broad leaved native woodlands in our climate will not burn. Shown most clearly in WW2, when the Luftwaffe dumped hundreds of tons of incendiary on SE England, in higher temps than we ever see. The woods could not be set on fire.

Only forest fires are of densely planted conifers. The intermediate habitat of bracken, gorse, Molinia and young saplings is a tinder box in the right conditions, but once this stage passes, risk drops to nothing. Or we could continue the current slash and burn.

magicbastarder

yeah, i have a little chuckle at the 'we need to burn the hills to stop them catching fire' argument.

it's like answering the question 'what's the best way to stop my house burning down next year?' with 'burn it down now!'

people burn the hills because of the financial incentive to; not because they're thinking far ahead to prevent burn in five years time.

and as per blaris's comment, it was seen as utterly remarkable last year, and a sign of how degraded they are, that some of the decidious woodland in killarney burned last year when fire reached them. first time it had been seen in ireland, AFAIK.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305125#Comment_120305125

Great idea, I'm selling two lots at the end of the month and another neighbour is selling one lot. The enviro's and them that think there's gold in them thar hills can go wild bidding.

Lime Tree Farm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305125#Comment_120305125

As my granny would say - "while they're at us, they're leaving someone else alone"

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120304373#Comment_120304373

Exactly.....I pointed out what a controlled burn is and the procedures for such.

You expect me to parse every sentence?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120305047#Comment_120305047

In 1986 mapped the mountains in Mayp from Croagh Patrick to Killary Harbor...the whole Erriff Valley. The hills were covered in sheep. There was gullying, eroded peat stacks, overgrazed mountainside and worn paths. In summer 2022 I was back in those hills and I estimate the sheep numbers are down by 90-95% compared to back then, and the hills can carry those few sheep without damage to the soils.

Anto_Meath

I believe that in the early 2000 there was actually less sheep on them mountains than there is now. They had to encourage the local farmers to restock the mountains to a certain extent as briars & the likes were taking over killing the native heathers and flowers that they were trying to protect. Its all about getting the balance right when working with land, animals & the environment. We want to improve all 3 and leave then in a better place than where we found them.

Jonnyc135

Frightening what some eco warriors come out with on these threads. On paper my farm is carbon neural, in fact I'm sequestering more than I'm emitting, unfortunately anyone like me gets no credit for this and there's alot of farmers out their like me - instead these mud slingers try too portray many farms in this boat as an environmental disaster to that I say f@@ck right off.

whisky_galore

It's all well and good until someone's house goes up, or worse.

magicbastarder

we're talking specifically about upland farms, no?

what these eco warriors want is this map not to look like this. ireland noticeably the worst in europe for ecological integrity.