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EU Biodiversity strategy 2030

[Deleted User]

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1590574123338&uri=CELEX:52020DC0380

Apart from being a truly thrilling read... I haven't finished it yet... There are significant concerns within this document for any farmer with "peatland", and I would think wet/heavy land. The document proposes to increase protection % (layman's terms add in a significant number of hectares to be newly designated), but more concerning is the term "strict protection" - when Googled, the definition has gems like "where human visitation, use and impacts are strictly controlled and limited". Think that over for a moment.

https://www.iucn.org/theme/protected-areas/about/protected-area-categories

And from the document itself:
"Strict protection does not necessarily mean the area is not accessible to humans, but leaves natural
processes essentially undisturbed to respect the areas’ ecological requirements."

What's the definition of rewilding.

Must read on now to find out "whodunnit".

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Capercaillie

Say my name wrote: »

A few rhinoceroseses pictures sounds good.

And the grass feeds rabbit, hare, swan, goose, duck, deer.

I've a good one for you. A wildlife reserve was set up on a place called the north sloblands, reclaimed sealand just to the north of wexford town to protect wintering greenland white fronted geese. That time it was an intensive dairy farm with fields of ryegrass and winter crops.
The powers that be decided they knew better and ceased the dairy farm. Ploughed the ground to barley and beet. The beet was to feed the geese. People say the numbers of geese are way back on the days when it was a working farm and the geese were eating the grass.
That's life or that's people thinking they knew life.

Poor breeding productivity in Greenland is behind the decline in white fronted geese in Wexford. Only a small proportion of the North Slob is actually a reserve, the rest is commercial farm.

Say my name

Castlekeeper wrote: »

Easy to monitor with a satellite and some software would seem to be the main box ticked there. It doesn't sound very diverse does it?

BTW, as you probably well know, many species are not fans of the boundaries.

Ain't it all for boxes to tick nowadays?
Life is as diverse as stars in the sky.

We'd talk ourselves to death and never achieve anything. A bit like brexit.

The most any of us can do is see what we have already and maintain and see can we add to it.
The breadwinner will always be food production though. This year's prices across the board should have shown us all that.

gozunda

Castlekeeper wrote: »

Easy to monitor with a satellite and some software would seem to be the main box ticked there. It doesn't sound very diverse does it?

BTW, as you probably well know, many species are not fans of the boundaries.

Some maybe not. But hedgerows, old stone walls and ditches provide some of the most diverse habits there is for birds, invertebrates and wild animals. The mixture of trees, shrubs and wild plants remain a reservoir for once common native plants such as cowslip, bluebell and primrise . The ivy on trees and the much maligned briar are a hugely important source of food for wild bees even when little else. Haws from whitethorn, sloes from blackthorn and hips from wild rose are important food for birds and animals. They also provide a corridor through which wildlife can move and spread. I think the estimate of something like over 4% of tree cover national are in hedgerows.

Around here with the prevailing winds they provide essential shelter for livestock. The one farm near me who removed a lot of internal boundaries - the cattle stand miserable and bunched up together in bad whether and more importantly good boundaries make good neighbours

Capercaillie

Say my name wrote: »

Very contradictory there. You're in favour of doing nothing and not doing nothing.
Fact is you've talked yourself into that land for nature should be managed by man.

Take the concrake. It's only here from farmers growing meadows up for forage for horses and cattle. If those farmers with the horses and cattle weren't there either would the corncrake. It's only with the mechanization of agriculture and speed and timing of harvest did the corncrake go.
Now we've schemes to bring back the corncrake. Turn back time perhaps to where it was. That's as artificial and man managed as you can get.

Were you yourself not on here cussing a rookery on deciduous trees and devising ways to eradicate the rookery?

And you've been shown how grassland feeds wildlife when you claimed it as barren.

Hard to figure..when you post you don't believe in this managing lark.

Corncrake were originally found (before any farming) on seasonally flooded meadows like Shannon Callow/Moy valley or on spartina type grassland on offshore islands. As forests were cleared they became adapted to a new man-made habitat, traditional hay meadows and numbers soared. As you said early mowing largely eradicated them, "improvement" of grassland has also impacted them hugely.

Say my name

Capercaillie wrote: »

Corncrake were originally found (before any farming) on seasonally flooded meadows like Shannon Callow/Moy valley or on spartina type grassland on offshore islands. As forests were cleared they became adapted to a new man-made habitat, traditional hay meadows and numbers soared. As you said early mowing largely eradicated them, "improvement" of grassland has also impacted them hugely.

Hard to believe they're related to Moorhens.
Probably a relic from grasslands and tundra just after the ice age ended?

endainoz

Castlekeeper wrote: »

What are you basing this on? Personal experiences or youtube videos and webinars?
Alan Savory would mainly appear to me to be an egotistical colonialist specialist in bull****. It's basic ecology for dummies, and as for his contexts and strategies, you'd figure out more playing a game of chess with an 8 year old.

I do have some personal experience yeah but obviously these things take time, my soil isn't degraded to a desert either so it's a different approach. Planned grazing is vital to help soil health. Basing it on both by the way, it's no harm to see how other people do things, god forbid you might learn something you didn't know already.

As for egotistical colonialist nonsense, it sure sounds very colonial to restore pastures to what they used to be alright. I guess every other regenerative farmer who praises his methods are wrong so?

If I'd learn more from an eight year old than him about how to rejuvenate degraded soil, please do try to enlighten me.

[Deleted User]

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I would be a proponent of closing the gate on these places and marginal or designated land and letting nature take its course.

Sure put in an offer to the owners, they may sell it to you to do as you please.

[Deleted User]

HillFarmer wrote: »

God help the poor insects and birds that are declining year on year in Ireland.
Great to hear about the Dung beetles but we farmers have our heads in the sand re the current crisis.

Do you think everything is currently ok?

I don't care what anyone states, intensively farmed land is not beneficial to nature. There needs to be a balance on every farm. The problem in my view is greatest in Dairy Country. Lads with 200 cows around here looking to get to 300.

_Brian wrote: »

I suppose the biggest problem is the disparity of the distribution of cows now. Areas like our own here would likely have a lower density of cows now compared day to 1970’s. When every farm on our road we’re pushing on as many cows as they could sending milk.

Bit in more fertile areas the cow numbers and densities have exploded. Exploded to a level where to accommodate them farming practices not in accordance with biodiversity have to be used. Compounding that when you have a number of farms in the same area pushing these high densities it puts massive burden on river catchments.

Loosing quotas and allowing unregulated dairy expansion has been bad for biodiversity and nature.

I think you're both missing the most important aspect of "intensive", which is management. Management is what makes a thing good, bad, or neutral. The fella below very obviously doesn't get it.

Castlekeeper wrote: »

What are you basing this on? Personal experiences or youtube videos and webinars?
Alan Savory would mainly appear to me to be an egotistical colonialist specialist in bull****. It's basic ecology for dummies, and as for his contexts and strategies, you'd figure out more playing a game of chess with an 8 year old.

Capercaillie

Say my name wrote: »

Hard to believe they're related to Moorhens.
Probably a relic from grasslands and tundra just after the ice age ended?

Crake species fill a number of ecological niches. The moorhen/ coot in pure wetlands, spotted crake in marshes/wedges and corncrake in still drier land. Corncrake chicks can survive being drowned wet unlike species like partridge, a hint at their marshy origins!!

Castlekeeper

endainoz wrote: »

I do have some personal experience yeah but obviously these things take time, my soil isn't degraded to a desert either so it's a different approach. Planned grazing is vital to help soil health. Basing it on both by the way, it's no harm to see how other people do things, god forbid you might learn something you didn't know already.

As for egotistical colonialist nonsense, it sure sounds very colonial to restore pastures to what they used to be alright. I guess every other regenerative farmer who praises his methods are wrong so?

If I'd learn more from an eight year old than him about how to rejuvenate degraded soil, please do try to enlighten me.

He obviously has a large following, but I've only to count a few species and to do a bit of digging around with a spade to see that livestock are not essential for ecological regeneration around here. The thing with learning is to see how lots of people do things not just one.
Colonialist in this sense is the way he spreads his gospel without reference or regard to indigenous knowledge and practices, the way his courses and lectures are prescriptive and do not take on board constructive criticism and discussion, it's a well known symptom of a colonialist culture. You're a fan fair enough, it won't do you any harm.

Seeing and understanding are different things; for instance my last point referred to the game of chess with regard to the contexts and strategies, which his foundation's lay great store by, to the extent that he preaches that it should be the foundation structures for all world governance! The age of opponent was merely to illustrate that it doesn't have to be at grandmaster level to encourage a level of lateral or scenario building thoughts. It wasn't referring to an 8 yr old knowledge of soil's, but it didn't either.

Castlekeeper

[Deleted User] wrote: »

The fella below very obviously doesn't get it.

I'm getting plenty of it thanks

Say my name

Getting very confrontational in this thread.
Almost like the tone perpetuating from the communal communist type farming of Chris Newman attacking the grand ole master Savoury capitalist farming.

Are we not better than that to bring that schoolyard name calling and bullying into this forum?

Let them two gobsh1tes at it! Ye don't have to behave like them.

Take their practices if ye want but ye don't have to copy them as people.

Edit: just in case anyone wants to join there's religions where they grow their own food and everyone's income goes into the one pot and is redistributed among everybody.
Not saying it's right or wrong. But it's there with members in this country.

TheBoyConor

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Sure put in an offer to the owners, they may sell it to you to do as you please.

Can the government not just pay an attractively high enough rate to the owners for to leave the land idle?

Perhaps assess what maximum income could be generated from the land with intensive practices and then set a higher rate for leaving the land back to nature
If the numbers make it a viable proposition, people will do it.

Essentially, make it more lucrative to let land return to nature than for it is to farm it.

endainoz

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Can the government not just pay an attractively high enough rate to the owners for to leave the land idle?

Perhaps assess what maximum income could be generated from the land with intensive practices and then set a higher rate for leaving the land back to nature
If the numbers make it a viable proposition, people will do it.

Essentially, make it more lucrative to let land return to nature than for it is to farm it.

The issue here is that your assuming all farms are intensive, which is far from the case.

TheBoyConor

endainoz wrote: »

The issue here is that your assuming all farms are intensive, which is far from the case.

Well in terms of area, the larger farms are intensive ones.
It should be even easier to justify incentivise rewilding of non intensive farms and marginal land, as the potential income from those are even less, meaning the financial incentives will be even greater good the owner.

Especially in marginal land areas, the owners are often older and the young uninterested and perhaps would be happy to be freed from the drudgery of labouring on the land in exchange for very attractive rewilding payments.

NcdJd

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Can the government not just pay an attractively high enough rate to the owners for to leave the land idle?

Perhaps assess what maximum income could be generated from the land with intensive practices and then set a higher rate for leaving the land back to nature
If the numbers make it a viable proposition, people will do it.

Essentially, make it more lucrative to let land return to nature than for it is to farm it.

Farming is a way of life for a lot of people and has been around for thousands of years. There is no reason why farming and nature cannot exist in the same area. And does in alot of cases despite what you think. Farming is part of the solution not part of the problem.

All well and good saying your going to plant a forest. Good for you but at the end of the day Ireland's habits and landscapes are very localised, complex and unique. Alot of the proponents of the rewilding agenda I find have no comprehension of this fact.

Edit are farmers going to be paid more for their produce after a de- intensification exercise? I think not. That makes you part of the problem too. Consumers are tied into this too on the price they are willing to pay for food.

Capercaillie

endainoz wrote: »

The issue here is that your assuming all farms are intensive, which is far from the case.

Depends on the definition of intensive though which varies depending on who you ask.

Capercaillie

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Well in terms of area, the larger farms are intensive ones.
It should be even easier to justify incentivise rewilding of non intensive farms and marginal land, as the potential income from those are even less, meaning the financial incentives will be even greater good the owner.

Especially in marginal land areas, the owners are often older and the young uninterested and perhaps would be happy to be freed from the drudgery of labouring on the land in exchange for very attractive rewilding payments.

Rewilding works best on large areas, for example huge nature reserves like Okavango delta. The smaller the area you generally need more management. I have a small farm (25 acres), production wise I'm a useless farmer, but in terms of biodiversity I would be very good. I would put a lot of work/money into the biodiversity side and if i totally abandoned the site biodiversity would decrease.

TheBoyConor

I don't get how biodiversity would decrease if you abandoned the land to nature.. how is that?

In my view of you leave a block of land to nature you won't be cutting ditches anymore. That means more hedgerow habitat. If trees fall out into the field in a storm, well the deadwood provides habitat and substrate for insects, who in turn provide food for birds. Hedgerows would gradually encroach out into fields over the years, perhaps some isolated pockets of hazel would appear in the open. Drains would block up meaning some portions of the land would become wetland.

If some native trees are planted in pockets around the fields before abandonment the process will be accelerated.

The only intervention I would propose is checking for and eradicating any invasive or non native species if and when they do arise.

Removing the constant nutrient drain on the soil by grazing or crop harvest allows the soil fertility to recover. And the removal of sprays will allow insect life to thrive in the dense ground cover.

The field would become over run with "weeds" in between the planted pockets. But if these "weeds" are a native species then they are not a problem. Most provide a source of food for bees.

Capercaillie

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I don't get how biodiversity would decrease if you abandoned the land to nature.. how is that?

In my view of you leave a block of land to nature you won't be cutting ditches anymore. That means more hedgerow habitat. If trees fall out into the field in a storm, well the deadwood provides habitat and substrate for insects, who in turn provide food for birds. Hedgerows would gradually encroach out into fields over the years, perhaps some isolated pockets of hazel would appear in the open. Drains would block up meaning some portions of the land would become wetland.

If some native trees are planted in pockets around the fields before abandonment the process will be accelerated.

The only intervention I would propose is checking for and eradicating any invasive or non native species if and when they do arise.

https://youtu.be/zls6AwqkyWk short video on farm, everything you see in video has strict management to improve habitat.

[Deleted User]

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Can the government not just pay an attractively high enough rate to the owners for to leave the land idle?

Perhaps assess what maximum income could be generated from the land with intensive practices and then set a higher rate for leaving the land back to nature
If the numbers make it a viable proposition, people will do it.

Essentially, make it more lucrative to let land return to nature than for it is to farm it.

The crux of this thread isn't payments. It's legal burdens which are outside of the CAP and dictated by the EU and a member state on to privately owned lands.

Payments, for whatever else, are voluntary and I have zero issue with what people voluntarily want to do with their own land, by their own decision.

As for assessing income, no thanks, that would come solely from conventional thinking.

TheBoyConor

Fair play to him that looks great. But it's very much targeted at the corn crake. Intensivelu produced cork crake habitat.

Huge clumps of wild nettle, thistle, briar and ragwort wouldn't be long getting established in most places with little effort.

Capercaillie

TheBoyConor wrote: »

Fair play to him that looks great. But it's very much targeted at the corn crake. Intensivelu produced cork crake habitat.

Huge clumps of wild nettle, thistle, briar and ragwort wouldn't be long getting established in most places with little effort.

Habitat for corncrake and entire traditional hay meadow habitat. Skylark, meadow pipit, twite, chough, orchids, barnacle geese, whopper swan, frogs, merlin, golden plover (winter). Large dense nettle beds are not easy to create and manage.....

TheBoyConor

I can't get my head around the need for everything to be managed. Nature is the absence of human intervention and interference.
My approach would be to plant a week planned mix of trees, shrubs and undergrowth and close the gate behind me. Only exceptional intervention after that would be keeping and eye out for invasive non native species and removing them.

gozunda

TheBoyConor wrote: »

I don't get how biodiversity would decrease if you abandoned the land to nature.. how is that?

In my view of you leave a block of land to nature you won't be cutting ditches anymore. That means more hedgerow habitat. If trees fall out into the field in a storm, well the deadwood provides habitat and substrate for insects, who in turn provide food for birds. Hedgerows would gradually encroach out into fields over the years, perhaps some isolated pockets of hazel would appear in the open. Drains would block up meaning some portions of the land would become wetland.

If some native trees are planted in pockets around the fields before abandonment the process will be accelerated.

The only intervention I would propose is checking for and eradicating any invasive or non native species if and when they do arise.

Removing the constant nutrient drain on the soil by grazing or crop harvest allows the soil fertility to recover. And the removal of sprays will allow insect life to thrive in the dense ground cover.

The field would become over run with "weeds" in between the planted pockets. But if these "weeds" are a native species then they are not a problem. Most provide a source of food for bees.

Because simply abandoning land does not equal nature and diversity. Look at any urban site that has been abandoned you will see a place rank with just a couple of rampant vegetative species and fek all else.

Wildlife requires a wide range of diverse habits- not just overgrown land. The flora and fauna here have evolved along with farming practices such as meadows and managed hedgerows. Get rid of a all management - you do so to the detriment of many present species.

In the Netherlands they attempted a rewilding experiment a few years back. This is part of a report on how that worked out.

But because the soil was so fertile, vegetation soon threatened to take over. Much of the Oostvaardersplassen was on its way to becoming a woodland — meaning all the wetland bird species would disappear.

What the site needed was open grassland, which could support grazing birds and would serve as a transition zone between the marsh and the developed areas farther inland.

You can read about the rest of that disastrous experiment here.

https://whyy.org/segments/the-netherlands-grand-rewilding-experiment-gone-haywire/

Birdnuts

gozunda wrote: »

You can read about the rest of that disastrous experiment here.

https://whyy.org/segments/the-netherlands-grand-rewilding-experiment-gone-haywire/

It didn't work cos they designed a project that required culling of the larger herbivores in the absence of top predators like wolves. They didn't bother to cull, hence the failure of the project(though ironically wolves have started to return to Holland since). As Caper mentioned a few post ago - true "rewilding" is only possible in large landscapes that can accommodate the return of top predators. Otherwise some level of "positive" human management will be required to achieve optimum results for rare species like Corncrakes etc.

Capercaillie

gozunda wrote: »

Because simply abandoning land does not equal nature and diversity. Look at any urban site that has been abandoned you will see a place rank with just a couple of rampant vegetative species and fek all else.

Wildlife requires a wide range of diverse habits- not just overgrown land. The flora and fauna here have evolved along with farming practices such as meadows and managed hedgerows. Get rid of a all management - you do so to the detriment of many present species.

In the Netherlands they attempted a rewilding experiment a few years back. This is part of a report on how that worked out.

You can read about the rest of that disastrous experiment here.

https://whyy.org/segments/the-netherlands-grand-rewilding-experiment-gone-haywire/

True rewilding introduces large predators or ar least culling as a proxy. That Dutch model is not a good example.

Water John

Land can provide the three things, produce for sale and human beings to eat, biodiversity and carbon sequestration. Only a managed land can maximise all three. Rewilding offers little or no opportunity to reduce GHG.

Say my name

What about if you don't like eating humans?

Water John

Got me there, SMN.
They're best when they are young and not after getting tough.