New ‘Healthy Hedgerows’ app launched to help farmers, hedgerows and wildlife - PTES
Free advice about how to apply the hedgerow lifecycle to healthy hedge management
Today (28 June), wildlife charity People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) launches a brand-new ‘Healthy Hedgerows’ app, aimed at farmers and land managers that want to make – or adjust – their hedgerow management plans to grow the healthiest of hedges.
Designed for farmers, landowners and land managers, this free app enables users to find out where hedges are within their natural lifecycle and offers instant feedback on how they can be best managed to ensure their continued health.
Trying to manage hedgerows according to their quite complex lifecycle, especially across a whole farm, is a challenge. This app strips away these complexities and simply asks just six easy questions to rapidly assess each hedge, making the task of creating a farm scale management plan much easier.
PTES hopes this will help farmers create a thriving network of healthy hedges that criss-cross the UK’s countryside, ensuring these iconic and hugely important habitats continue to benefit both those working on the land, but also the many species that call hedgerows home.
Megan Gimber, Key Habitats Project Officer at PTES, explains: “The quality and structure of hedgerows will deteriorate if they’re managed in the same way for long periods of time, and over time they will eventually be lost. The best way to prevent this is by managing according to their lifecycle, which may include more sensitive trimming, periods of non-intervention and, in time, rejuvenation. Whatever condition a hedge is in, it can be brought back to good health. Our new app pinpoints where it is in its lifecycle and the best management options to adopt to get the most benefit for the farm and its precious wildlife."
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Posted On: 29/06/2021