Fire back in favour as upland farm management tool

A traditional technique is gaining favour among experts in upland livestock farming.

At the national hill sheep conference recently organised by Teagasc in Bantry, Co Cork, ‘Prescribed Fire as a Land Management Tool in Irish Uplands’ was a somewhat unusual topic.

Ireland has experienced an increasing problem with wildfires in recent years, with 2010 and 2011 considered catastrophic, due to over 1,500 hectares of forest being lost in both years, and up to 25,000 hectares of open land burned in each of these years.