This article is from page 25 of the 2007-11-06 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 25 JPG
NORTH Clare’s BurrenLIFE Project (BLP) is once again reaching out to the farmers of the region, looking for their expert input and experience of how this delicate environment should be managed.
The BLP, which is Ireland’s first major partnership-based farming- for-conservation project, will host a series of meetings across the Burren during the month of November.
The meetings will provide informa- tion on the project to the wider farm-
ing community and update them on the work completed by the BLP over the past three years.
“We will discuss aspects such as feeding and grazing and talk about best practices in terms of farm man- agement. A good example of this is that we have spent a lot of money on programmes for the construction and upkeep of internal farm walls,” said Mr Ruairi O Conchutir, Finance & Operations Officer of the BLP.
‘There is a whole range of practical measures that farmers themselves will find useful and beneficial. The
most important aspect of the meet- ings is to get feedback from farm- ers, their opinion of the project and where it is at and, more importantly, their opinion of where it is going.”
Meetings will be hosted in Bal- lyvaughan’s Hylands Hotel, this evening, November 6; Doolin’s Micko Russell Centre on Wednes- day November 7; Cassidy’s in Car- ron next Tuesday, November 13 and the in the Community Hall in Tubber on Wednesday, November 14. Each meetings will begin at 8pm and last for one hour.
“The last round of meetings was at the start of the project. We are more than half-way through the project so we will be going back to the farmers with new information. We certainly have developed best practice guide- lines for scrub removal, for the treat- ment of scrub and the concentration of feed,’ said O Conchuir.
‘The most important aspect of this is the relevance of what we are do- ing for the farmers. We want to know what measures are beneficial, both for them as farmers and for the pro- tection of the Burren.”