Stone walls are corridors for nature and are equally as important as hedgerows, Teagasc countryside management specialist Catherine Keena, has said.

“There are two things – quality and quantity. In terms of quantity, a stone wall wouldn’t compare with a hedgerow. But there are specialised species, plants, lichens and fungi, that grow on stone walls,” she told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“A bigger thing with stone walls is the landscape element. In some areas stone walls are a landscape feature. For example the Aran Islands – if they were covered with scrub or were gone, it would be a different landscape,” Keena said.

There are regional variations in them, but the cuckoo, bats, lichen and moths are all associated with stone walls

She said stone walls provide ecosystem services, both from a biodiversity point of view and a landscape view.

“There are regional variations in them, but the cuckoo, bats, lichen and moths are all associated with stone walls. The biodiversity in an area will be linked to stone walls.

“They should be equally as important as hedgerows in the next CAP, from a historical, cultural and biodiversity view. You can’t replace them, you wouldn’t build them today,” she said.

Ireland has the greatest length of stone walls across Europe

The Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland said there are 400,000km of stone walls in Ireland, a figure which comes from the 2013 publication Europe’s Field Boundaries by Georg Muller.

Ireland has the greatest length of stone walls across Europe.

There are an estimated 660,000km of hedgerows in Ireland and their carbon sequestration potential is set to be measured by 2021 under the Government’s Climate Action Plan.

Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed said last year that his Department had facilitated the planting of around 11,000km of new hedgerows and the rejuvenation of 6,000km under successive agri-environment schemes.

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