New ‘Farmland Pollinator-friendly Hedgerows’ online training course
The National Biodiversity Data Centre is delighted to launch a new online training course on ‘Farmland Pollinator-friendly Hedgerows’, developed by the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan.
With Ireland believed to be the most hedge dense country in the world, the course aims to make farmland more pollinator friendly by helping farmers learn which pollinators they might find on their farm, and which evidence-based actions they can take to help them.
We hope the course will give farmers, farm advisors and agricultural students an insight into the value of native species-rich hedgerows 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 refuge for beneficial insects, birds and pollinators.
The course includes a section on how to assess your existing hedgerows and find out which native plant species are present, as well as how to manage existing hedgerows and restore and create new ones.
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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