Several locally led agri-environmental schemes are kicking off around the country as funding is drawn down.

Almost 700 farmers were offered contracts with the Hen Harrier Project, said its manager Fergal Monaghan. Of those, 628 have accepted and 600 have completed their initial assessment for the €25m scheme.

The scheme is preparing for the first round of payments for the end of September and, depending on money left, will decide on another batch of applicants to allow into the scheme in October.

The Wicklow Uplands Group has recruited a project manager and participants for its locally led scheme – the Sustainable Uplands Agri-environment Scheme (SUAS). Declan Byrne is managing the project and he told the Irish Farmers Journal there are now almost 30 farmers involved in the scheme at the minute. The scheme is made up of three commonages and farmers receive money for work done on them.

“We have an ecologist assessing the hills at the minute and between them we will make a plan of the hill which we can review each year,” Byrne said.

Elsewhere, the Blackstairs farming group is in the process of recruiting a project manager. It secured €1.5m in funding over five years through the European Innovation Partnership for Agriculture Productivity and Sustainability (EIP AGRI). It has appointed a part-time office worker and will hold a showcase on hill sheep farming this Sunday in the village of Rathanna, Co Carlow.

Patricia Deane is managing another project in the Magillicuddy Reeks and she says that it will have a launch shortly, followed by a number of landowner meetings.

“We will then be inviting the landowners to complete expressions of interest forms to us for the operational group to consider in order to select the landowners on to the scheme,” she said.