DCC no longer cutting grass verges, reasoning…..biodiversity.

iniscealtra

Briars do not damage your car. You car is a hell of a lot stronger than a briar. I was driving behind quite a fancy car driving dangerously recently, They were afraid to go near the ditch, obviously not used to less than a motorway. There was plenty of space for two cars. Afraid of the briars maybe. 😂

Shoog

I live in the countryside and this whole overgrown lainways is bullshit. A used road will have very little straying into the road because vehicles constantly knock it back. More hysteria.

A council actively manage junctions for line of sight so it all just bullshit.

You don't like the look of natural verges - tough.

North East Rural Cork. They seem to "maintain" it well enough, each year

magicbastarder

it's gas how people view these things. my wife grew up in north county dublin, on a single lane road. we had a big garden party in her parents' place when we got married - june bank holiday weekend. the verges were awash with cow parsley and looked great.

about two days before the party, the neighbouring farmer (who was being very generous to us) thought 'oh, this looks really untidy for all the guests who will be arriving' and mowed the verges for probably a kilometre approaching the house. he genuinely was trying to be nice.

easygoing39

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984363#Comment_120984363

https://www.kugaownersclub.co.uk/threads/help-fixing-scuff-marks-from-country-lane-hedges.20390/

You dont know much about car paintwork do ya?

ZookeeperDub

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120982926#Comment_120982926

I have lived in the countryside the majority of my life. A longish life now.

Maybe you can send me on pictures of these dangerous hedgerows because I have failed to see any of them in a long time. Many years ago the hedgerows didn't get cut every year, it could be years between cuts and then you could have a case.

So images would be great. I will wait on my high horse for the moment

magicbastarder

worth mentioning again, this has nothing to do with what the thread is about. this has always happened on country lanes and is nothing to do with biodiversity changes.

pixelburp

Oh no: not scuffs!

Ah well then, cut everything, fúck the ecosystem: people's cars might get scuffs.

magicbastarder

yeah, maybe it's just me but i accept that when i bring my car out into the big bad world, it'll get superficial rubs and scuffs like that.

and in the link supplied above, with the 'damage' done (which would be extreme - i drive on country roads a lot, the car has not been polished in 7 years, and doesn't look even a fraction that bad) - it buffed out.

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984581#Comment_120984581

Exactly, thread is about DCC and is relevant to other urban and suburban councils.

It is absolutely a cost cutting measure using biodiversity as an excuse. Linked article picture in the OP has a lovely meadow with cut verge. Also see that the narrow strip between road and pavement is mowed.

These are not being mowed or verge cut where I live. Not a single wildflower seed has been sown by the council on these margins, it's just messy grass collecting rubbish to save a few bob.

My front garden has been a wildflower meadow for 6 years now so I'm very much in favour of them.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984744#Comment_120984744

What you seem to want is the high maintained high cost anuals management, sort of equivalent to maintaining a park. Every year needs the ground ploughed up to keep the anuals coming. Think of the cost of that.

Encouraging biodiversity is about letting what is naturally suited to an area colonize and establish itself naturally. Subsequently managing it to encourage more natives to colonize and spread.

The issue here is a complete ignorance of ecological principles.

lawred2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120969001#Comment_120969001

I've seen this... what do these councils actually do at this stage?

lawred2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120984592#Comment_120984592

I think it says a lot about Ireland that hedgerows often tend to be the pinnacle of biodiversity.

The rest of it is either grazed or cultivated to the point of lifelessness.

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985360#Comment_120985360

Incorrect, I don't know how you got that from my post.

pixelburp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985572#Comment_120985572

I'm 43 and used to go to the Burren on holidays with my folks; the nice village of Ballyvaughan specifically and about the early 90s as a rough period. I returned there, talking the same main road into the village a year or three back - and the difference was shocking.

What used to be a rugged, stony landscape in places as you approached the village - or at least so said my memory - had become just more farmland; the starkly beautiful land cultivated and stripped of the natural beauty. Whole hillsides I remember as grey from childhood just green pasture(?) now. I'd be curious to know how much of that Karst landscape has been lost in the last 30 years - if any, and it's not just my wonky memory.

Obviously that's all a different matter to hedge rows and wild flowers of the original subject, but it's depressing how we seem hardwired as a species to destroy the very aspects of our culture and ecosystem that make it all singular and arresting in the first place.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120985626#Comment_120985626

The burren karst landscape take a very particular type of land management with outwintered cattle on the uplands. It take local knowledge and specially adapted cattle. The burren LIFE project was established in an attempt to bring it back and maintain it in good status.

The problem is that managing the burren in the correct way is not how farmers want to farm because it is less productive and more work. So they don't. What you probably witnessed was the result of adding fertilizer to bring on rich soft rye grass which is what modern breeds are able for. The problem is that the addition of fertilizer will kill the species rich pasture to a monoculture of rye grass in a few short years with patches of the old species rich pasture holding on in small neglected pockets.

As soon as the EU LIFE funding ends the government will all but defund the initiative and let it wither on the vine.