The National Biodiversity Data Centre is delighted to launch a new online training course on ‘Farmland Pollinator-friendly Hedgerows’.
A farmland Hedgerow in flower. Photo: Ruth Wilson
With Ireland believed to be the most hedge dense country in the world, the course as part of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, aims to make farmland more pollinator friendly, by helping farmers to understand what wild pollinators occur on their farm, and what evidence-based actions can be taken to make the agricultural landscape more pollinator and biodiversity friendly.
We hope the course will give farmers, farm advisors and agricultural students an insight into the value of native species-rich hedgerows on the farm and the many benefits they can provide, such as, shade and shelter for livestock, nutrient buffering to protect water quality, help with flood alleviation and field drainage and a refuge for beneficial insects, birds and pollinators.
There’s a section on how to assess your existing hedgerows and find out which native plant species are present. The course also includes the management of existing hedgerows and how to restore and create new hedgerows.
The course will take around 30 minutes to complete and is a handy source of information about why hedgerows are important for the farm and for biodiversity.
To try the free course, simply go to our Biodiversity Learning Platform National Biodiversity Data Centre (biodiversityireland.ie)
The National Biodiversity Data Centre and the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan hope the course will provide inspiration to farmers to make their hedgerows more pollinator and biodiversity friendly. We would like to thank the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for their support.
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