Native Crayfish - €3 Million Project Bid Made

FishingMagic · Jan 11, 2012

This is a dedicated thread for discussing article: Native Crayfish - €3 Million Project Bid Made

cg74 · Jan 11, 2012

Excellent news but I don't know why an EU grant should be needed. It seems to me farmers/land owners are yet again being excused and bailed out from their responsibilities to the environment.

dangermouse · Jan 11, 2012

cg74 said:
Excellent news but I don't know why an EU grant should be needed. It seems to me farmers/land owners are yet again being excused and bailed out from their responsibilities to the environment.

Is it really the farmer/landowner`s responsibility to pay for a conservation project? Whilst they should obviously be responsible in their treatment of the land it`s not their responsibility to improve that land so that x-creature can live there. If you bought a house that had a stretch of river at the bottom of the garden how would you feel if the EA turned up and told you you had to pay x-thousand to help conserve some creature?

chub_on_the_block · Jan 11, 2012

dangermouse said:
If you bought a house that had a stretch of river at the bottom of the garden how would you feel if the EA turned up and told you you had to pay x-thousand to help conserve some creature?

But i would not be storing or generating cattle slurry or using sheep dip/pesticides/fungicides etc etc in my back garden, and if i did i would be taking precautions to stop it getting it into the river - expecting a large fine if it ever did.

dangermouse · Jan 11, 2012

chub_on_the_block said:
But i would not be storing or generating cattle slurry or using sheep dip/pesticides/fungicides etc etc in my back garden, and if i did i would be taking precautions to stop it getting it into the river - expecting a large fine if it ever did.

As I said the farmer should treat his land responsibly and he should be financially responsible for safe storage and disposal of chemicals etc. However, I don`t see why he should pay for something that is essentially nothing to do with him, ie a conservation project.

chub_on_the_block · Jan 11, 2012

dangermouse said:
As I said the farmer should treat his land responsibly and he should be financially responsible for safe storage and disposal of chemicals etc. However, I don`t see why he should pay for something that is essentially nothing to do with him, ie a conservation project.

I agree this should not be needed, but many farmers already get paid for managing their land in an environmentally sensitive manner - if many didnt they simply wouldnt. Whilst they may consider themselves to be the "natural custodians" of the countryside, many require financial incentives to perform this task well if the countryside is to have a wider value or use beyond basic food production.

laguna · Jan 11, 2012

A riparian owner owns only the land which water runs over, not the water nor its inhabitants.

dangermouse · Jan 12, 2012

chub_on_the_block said:
I agree this should not be needed, but many farmers already get paid for managing their land in an environmentally sensitive manner - if many didnt they simply wouldnt. Whilst they may consider themselves to be the "natural custodians" of the countryside, many require financial incentives to perform this task well if the countryside is to have a wider value or use beyond basic food production.

I don`t know enough about what grants farmers receive to really comment on this. Clearly farmers have a legal responsibility in how their land is managed as regards the environment. However there has to be a limit to that, the farmer`s primary aim is to produce food, it`s a business afterall. For example a farmer might be expected to provide access and a path across part of his land. That`s perfectly reasonable. However, if you suddenly start demanding that he pave that path that`s a different matter. Probably not the best example, but I hope you get where I`m coming from. I don`t really want to expand this discussion too far. All I was saying to cg74 was that it wasn`t really reasonable to expect a farmer to pay for a conservation project.

The bad one · Jan 12, 2012

dangermouse said:
Is it really the farmer/landowner`s responsibility to pay for a conservation project? Whilst they should obviously be responsible in their treatment of the land it`s not their responsibility to improve that land so that x-creature can live there. If you bought a house that had a stretch of river at the bottom of the garden how would you feel if the EA turned up and told you you had to pay x-thousand to help conserve some creature?

Farmers have a legal responsibility not to damage, harm, the environment where a protected species resides. Wildlife and Countryside Act, EU Habitats Directive, etc, etc. So the EA or NE can turn up and enforce, if needs be, the law of the land.
That said, they in most circumstances, will work with farmers where they are amenable to such partnership working. If however, they are intransigent to such working, they'll use the big stick of the law of the land to make them.
Upland hill farms as in this case are a special case, as they are very marginally profitable and that's recognised by both enforcing bodies. So to assist them to make the improvements necessary so the creatures starts to thrive in this area the grant has been applied for and some of the money will go to farmers for improvements on their farms.

Those improvements are likely to be better septic tanking systems to stop slurry runoff.
Advice on such things as farming practices that lessen high speed land runoff after heavy rains, and it rains a lot on the Kent and Eden catchment.
Advice on sustainable stock levels
Advice on maximising earnings from niche markets from the sustainable stock they produce.
Advice on further grant funding that they can tap into for planting trees hedges, reinstatement of walls.
There will be a myriad of other advice and conservation matters that will need dealing with.
Of course this advice is not free and the advisor(s) who will be the contact point for it needs to be paid a salary. So part of the grant application will have this element built into it.

With the best will in the world and commitment from the farmers to the project, because of their very marginal profitability they can not pay for it, so grant aid rightly needs to be given to them.

If we value the landscape such farmer farm in, and it would seem we do, and the wildlife that resides there, then they need assistance to achieve it and that can only come from grant aid, like it or not!

dangermouse · Jan 12, 2012

The bad one said:
Farmers have a legal responsibility not to damage, harm, the environment where a protected species resides. Wildlife and Countryside Act, EU Habitats Directive, etc, etc. So the EA or NE can turn up and enforce, if needs be, the law of the land.
That said, they in most circumstances, will work with farmers where they are amenable to such partnership working. If however, they are intransigent to such working, they'll use the big stick of the law of the land to make them.
Upland hill farms as in this case are a special case, as they are very marginally profitable and that's recognised by both enforcing bodies. So to assist them to make the improvements necessary so the creatures starts to thrive in this area the grant has been applied for and some of the money will go to farmers for improvements on their farms.

Those improvements are likely to be better septic tanking systems to stop slurry runoff.
Advice on such things as farming practices that lessen high speed land runoff after heavy rains, and it rains a lot on the Kent and Eden catchment.
Advice on sustainable stock levels
Advice on maximising earnings from niche markets from the sustainable stock they produce.
Advice on further grant funding that they can tap into for planting trees hedges, reinstatement of walls.
There will be a myriad of other advice and conservation matters that will need dealing with.
Of course this advice is not free and the advisor(s) who will be the contact point for it needs to be paid a salary. So part of the grant application will have this element built into it.

With the best will in the world and commitment from the farmers to the project, because of their very marginal profitability they can not pay for it, so grant aid rightly needs to be given to them.

If we value the landscape such farmer farm in, and it would seem we do, and the wildlife that resides there, then they need assistance to achieve it and that can only come from grant aid, like it or not!

Thanks. You`ve put a lot of information in there that I didn`t know about and you`ve summed up in a far more eloquent way what I was trying to say.

Native Crayfish - €3 Million Project Bid Made

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