CAFRE celebrates National Hedgerow Week - CAFRE
1mon 11d ago by feddit.uk/u/GreyShuck in nature@feddit.uk from www.cafre.ac.uk
Marking National Hedgerow Week 2026, alongside The Tree Council, CAFRE highlights the important role hedgerows play in agriculture, environmental protection and a resilient rural landscape.
Hedgerows are a long‑standing feature of Northern Ireland’s farms and continue to deliver practical benefits. Well managed hedges provide vital shelter for livestock, reduce wind exposure, protect soils and help slow water movement during periods of heavy rainfall. These functions support farm productivity while contributing to wider environmental goals.
Please do correct me if what I have read in the past is incorrect, but aren't hedge rows associated with long-term environmental degradation, such as being part of the decline of the beaver population in the UK?
If by 'long-term' you mean the spread of farming since the neolithic revolution and so on then, yes they are a feature associated with farming, which certainly has contributed to environmental degradation over the millennia.
However, unless we are going to abandon farming altogether - which simply isn't going to happen in the UK any time in the foreseeable future, and would bring a whole raft of other environmental changes - then hedgerows are a very significant habitat for the community of native species that have existed alongside farming for far longer than written records - and form major connective routes between larger areas of woodland.
Beavers were hunted to extinction around 400 years back - hedgerows had little if any impact on that.
That is what I mean, yes.
Thank you for the details.