Another Life: Our green conservation plan is making farmers see red

Looking out at daybreak in the stormy prelude to Christmas, I was watching for "phenomenal" waves, as promised by the weatherfolk. Seen between battering squalls of hail, the sea was not nearly as phenomenal as that off Donegal, where the swell was heaving above 15 metres. But it was quite notable enough for Thallabawn, heaping and cresting on distant reefs and feeding the broad swathe of foam along the shore.

The moon had dissolved into the same grey pall of spray masking the horizon and islands. I thought of our friends at Inishbofin’s East End, facing a winter that might again bring the sea sweeping to the doors of the village, shedding rocks and rubble from the shattered pier.

Storms are part of life here – sometimes, for those of Wagnerian spirit, even stimulating interludes. But, given the climate-change scenarios, could wilder stretches of the coast face a seasonal depopulation, human fortitude peeled away like slates from a roof by the stress of constant gales and rain, punctuated by lightning and its power “outages” – nature’s slash against man’s imitation?

For nature, meanwhile, it’s all part of constant earthly change. For 5,000 years and more, storms, tides and currents have been building and reworking the available coastal sediments – sand and gravel swept out in the melt of the glaciers, or carried down in rivers from the mountains. A summer as calm as the last one let waves build up the strand again, but storms wlll claw it all back and more besides.

Prof Robert Devoy, of University College Cork, leading Ireland's coastal research, puts Ireland at a "pivotal point" for storms on the European Atlantic margin. Model simulations show them getting stronger and more frequent and their centres moving eastward on the land.

And while for centuries Ireland’s postglacial shoreline could hold its own, Devoy now sees the early loss of many coastal wetlands. At west and south coasts especially, dune systems curve out to protect inner marshes, sandbanks and lagoons, rich in plants and waterbirds. At Rossbehy, in Co Kerry, once shielded by a long, vegetated dune spit, an eroded bar of sand and shingle scarcely gave pause to last winter’s waves.

In Mayo many coastal pastures were left densely carpeted with stones. But the year’s bigger challenge for many small farmers arrived inland, in changing prospects for the hills. Scandalously overgrazed by sheep in the late 20th century, undergrazing is what worries the Department of Agriculture now. The desertion of upland commonage by ageing farmers, or those with off-farm jobs, has brought official fears of the upward spread of gorse and other, disapproved “scrub” and the loss of hilly hectares from EU subsidy.

Among the huge increases in farming output proposed in the Government's Food Harvest 2020 plan, published in 2010, was 20 per cent more sheepmeat. Despite a "green" presentation, the plan brought an outcry from environmental NGOs and a warning from the European Commission to assess its environmental risks.

Out of this came Glas – Green Low-carbon Agri-Environment Scheme – the successor to Reps in the new rural-development programme, submitted to Brussels last July. Among its grants for “Areas of Natural Constraint” (formerly those “disadvantaged“) many were aimed at farms that included the Republic’s 440,000 hectares of commonage. But there was one big hurdle to receiving them.

“The ‘Uplands Conservation’ action,” as it was drafted, “requires that farmers form a grazing association and apply as a collective with at least 80 per cent of the farmers on the commonage signing up.”

Even when lowered to 50 per cent for a "second tier" of applications, this was asking too much. Achill Island, for example, has 557 commonage shareholders, only some of whom are still active on the hills. The farmers' collective instinct was, not unexpectedly, for protest: crowds at Maam Cross, in the heart of Connemara; a march on the Taoiseach's office in Castlebar; a meeting with Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney.

Dublin's officials, meanwhile, have been fielding 266 questions from the European Commission. They probed a rural-development plan that seemed more concerned with "mitigating" the impact of Food Harvest targets than "Working with Nature", as the press-conference posters promised.

According to informed comment by professional planners (at yourcommonage.ie) Brussels was surprised that Glas grants relating to commonage did nothing to protect the carbon storage of the bogs, or to conserve ungrazable but ecologically valuable upland habitats. It also seemed unimpressed by the need for even 50 per cent support for good grazing plans: if these would help the hills get their heather and wildlife back, why not go ahead with them anyway?

As approved by Brussels, early in 2015 the final version of Glas will bring grant applications from some 20,000 farmers, guided by a freshly recruited legion of 80 planners and advisers. It can also expect close scrutiny from the voluntary Irish Uplands Forum, whose big conference in Dungarvan last May showed the appetite for involvement of community groups in caring for the hills.