Northern Ireland: Heather Burning & Bracken Control II

Good to see that the interest in bracken control and prescribed burning in Northern Ireland that was in evidence in the meeting last month was repeated at a second event. See the report in Farming Life.

The active involvement of the NI Fire & Rescue Service in these discussions is encouraging. Prescribed burning should be seen as a way to reduce the risk of damage from wildfire and therefore reducing the NIFRS' exposure to wildfire.

I am pleased to have been invited to help with a wildfire event in Northern Ireland, next month, and I look forward to working with NIFRS. I will put more details on the Blog, in due course.

Northern Ireland: Heather Burning & Bracken Control

The DAB Farmers Group and the Ulster Farmers Union organised a meeting to discuss heather burning and bracken control, both key topics for hill farmers, with speakers from NI Fire Service and the NI Environment Agency.  The NIEA commented on the bracken control trails, a comparison of the effectiveness of different control techniques, that I visited last November.

The good turnout for a meeting to discuss these two issues, which are at the core of the Trust's work, is encouraging.  I hope to be invited back to NI, this year, to provide some input that will draw on our experience of working elsewhere.

See the full report in Farming Life.

Northern Ireland - Bracken Control

I am in Northern Ireland for the next two days as a guest of the College of Agriculture, Food & Rural Enterprise (CAFRE). I will be giving a presentation about bracken control to a farming audience at Greenmount College tomorrow evening at 19:45 and again at a meeting in Cushendall on Wednesday evening (20:00 in the Old School House).

It will be an action packed couple of days. Tomorrow, I will be visiting Greenmount Hill Farm in the morning, and no doubt discussing a range of hill and upland issues, and then I am meeting the National Trust on the Murlough NNR to view the CAFRE Bracken Control Demonstration Plots. On Wednesday, I will be visiting three more areas that have CAFRE Bracken Control Demonstration Plots. These are on Antrim Estates land near Glenarm, and on two National Trust properties on the River Bann estuary near Portstewart, and at Whitepark.