Sir, - Brendan Allan's letter (March 19th) is a timely reminder to local authorities, property developers and individual landowners of the importance of hedgerows as a major habitat for wildlife in general and birds in particular. Some two-thirds of our Irish countryside bird species depend on hedgerows for nesting, feeding and shelter from predators.
Apart from the extreme cases of outright bulldozing of hedgerows for road construction and building works to which Mr Allan refers, an even more widespread problem is the grossly excessive and badly timed annual onslaught on roadside hedges at the behest of county councils, right into the nesting season. BirdWatch Ireland has repeatedly called on county engineers to schedule their hedge-trimming for essential road maintenance and safety purposes outside the critical March to July period, when most birds are nesting.
Where tree and hedge cutting operations can be confined to the months of January and February, this is ideal in terms of minimising damage to bird-life. This timing avoids destroying wildlife habitat and birds' nests, eggs and chicks during the spring/summer period and also allows berried trees and shrubs, which provide essential feeding for birds, to be left intact throughout the autumn and early winter.
Although the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS) of the Department of Agriculture now encourages farmers to adopt a conservation-friendly approach to the maintenance of trees and hedges on the farm, there is still widespread misunderstanding of the actual requirements of the scheme. "Maintenance" is all too often misinterpreted as requiring tightly cut "neat and tidy" hedges, when in fact the best practice from a wildlife conservation point of view (a key objective of REPS) is to leave farm hedgerows in their natural undisturbed state for as long as possible. This can be done by scheduling the work outside the March to July period; by adopting a rotational programme around the farm over a three to five-year period, so as to minimise the loss of nesting habitat in any one year; and by avoiding excessively destructive use of heavy mechanical equipment.
Hopefully the long-awaited Government Bill to amend and update the 1976 Wildlife Act will strengthen the existing prohibition on the untimely destruction of hedgerow vegetation by bringing forward the operative date of this ban from mid April (which is far too late) to early March. - Yours, etc.,
John Murphy, Countryside Officer, BirdWatch Ireland, Longford Place, Monkstown, Co Dublin.