Conservation wisdom: Looking back to look forward

Conservation wisdom
Looking back to look forward
People helping wildlife have worked the land for generations with commitment, passion and wisdom. State conservation action has been well intentioned but its formulaic processes have stifled initiative and endeavour. The best of the old needs to combine with what we trust in the new.

I live and work in an ancient landscape. I can feel its time-depth every day. Its Early Medieval origins are written in place names and are tangible in the grasslands, woodlands and trees. In the first half of the Twentieth Century, some of the early movers and shakers of what was to become the conservation movement lived in this area. They were an eclectic bunch: academics, soldiers, writers and landowners. They had been through a world war or two and learned the value of life. They had a massive enthusiasm for, and fascination about, our wildlife, our heritage and our nation. Many of them were deeply conservative and mistrustful of change, challenging the policies and accepted wisdom of the day. Their passion for nature lead to the formation of some of the organisations we know today such as the Soil Association and the Farming & Wildlife Advisory Group. One of the things they strove for was an acceptance that a responsible government should look after our environment on our behalf.

State wildlife support - a process not a passion?

As government started to take action for nature, people were encouraged to leave it up to ‘Them’. This elite cadre was created of people and organisations entrusted with making policy and who were uniquely qualified to turn it into action. On the whole, everyone else was happy to let them get on with it and it certainly worked well in many respects. In hindsight, two things went wrong. Firstly, nature reserves and protected areas for wildlife are mostly privately owned by farmers and charities. The designation of protected areas has a minimal approach. Certain activities are discouraged or regulated within them, so government limits the extent over which those restrictions to private enterprise apply. If we had gone the other way and made protected areas into zones of opportunity, where special tax reliefs or incentives applied, we would be in a different place now. Secondly, we came to rely on paying farmers to produce wildlife through tax-payer funded schemes and regulation. The result of this has been that, for many land owners, nature conservation is no longer the great passion that it once was. They are invested in the process and not the outcome. Government money and regulation have taken the passion out of nature conservation: now it’s a scheme, not a vocation; it’s a deal to be brokered, not a personal responsibility. Every pro-nature decision on the farm needs financial justification through a payment scheme; so when the deal ends so does the good work. We have created a situation where small ‘non-departmental government bodies’ run UK nature conservation. Mostly, this is done remotely by desk-bound officers who do not have the time or the freedom to get out on the ground. They just manage the process.

We have spent the best part of a century trying to get governments to accept limited responsibility for our wildlife with a light touch in delivery. My question is, now we have got what we asked for, did we ask for the right thing? We have ended up in a world that we created, but none of us wanted.

Degraded by unintended consequences

It’s not just the public and charitable sector that seems to have gone down a blind alley. There was a time when game animals were reared and released to supplement wild populations. Gamekeepers were employed to manage habitat. However, we have traded in our cherished game animals such as brown trout, salmon, grey partridge and wild duck for poor facsimiles; pouring thousands of tons of stock fish of into our rivers and 40 million pheasants and 35 million red-legged partridges into our countryside every year. Feeding them costs £80 million in wheat alone. Wild game habitats are degraded because they are no longer needed. Field edges where partridges once nested are ‘sterile strips’ that reduce weed incursion, our wonderful chalk streams are little more than dredged ditches teeming with super-sized rainbow trout. Our woodlands are increasingly devoid of wildlife interest because the deer have eaten it all and we have to grow trees inside fences or in tiny plastic tree-prisons. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Species-rich meadows beside a chalk stream in Wiltshire

Signs of hope

The big picture seems to me to be all wrong and the direction of travel for nature conservation inexorably towards failure and collapse. But in the fine grain there is so much to inspire, celebrate and cheer for. If I just think about the last few months:

• ·      I have been photographing otters on the Hampshire Avon and watching them munch signal crayfish in a local pond. Otters! Right on my doorstep! I still get the same thrill that I got when I first saw one in the distance on Loch Arkaig.
• ·      I sat on the chalk downs near my home, surrounded by what I think is one of the most diverse grassland swards in the country, in a waving sea of orchids, yellow rattle and herbs.
• ·      I see peregrines cutting circles around the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. This is still utterly marvelous to me.
• ·      In the spring, I was able to show one of my photography clients a great bustard powering across the dawn skies of Cranborne Chase.
• ·      Every day on the way to work I see red kites swirling over the downs, pursued by ravens whose croak can be heard all over the Wiltshire Downs. Thirty years ago, we used to get very excited about a buzzard’s nest!
• 
  

But are all these steps in the right direction just too small: too little, too late?

A red kite soars over the Nadder Valley

Changing mindsets?

We have got to get back to what we wanted to do thirty or forty years ago, but now we need to restore as well as conserve and enhance. On Cranborne Chase, we are trying to do what we can by bringing groups of farmers together to act in concert regardless of schemes and incentives.

We need to stop accepting the failed solutions offered by many nature conservation organisations and the governmental, charitable and private vested interests. We need to incentivise private landowners in ways that will embed nature conservation in the warp and weft of how they farm and manage the land for decades to come, not these temporary deals with the tax payer. The hunters should cry out for wild fishing, demand fair chase hunting of wild birds and mammals so that we can get back to managing habitat instead of feeding artificial populations of stocked game.

We need to spend our money on the right things. There is no shortage of money, that is a myth and a poor excuse. We spend untold millions on ineffective and inefficient protection of European Protected Species and nationally protected species when we could spend that money far more wisely. For instance, how much newt fencing do we actually need and would it not be better spent on securing landscape scale wetland projects into the future? What more could we achieve for bats if we could take the money that is spent on surveys and spend it on managing foraging habitat?

The 50th Birthday Walk for Prostate Cancer UK

Later this month, I will turn 50 years old. I wanted to mark the occasion with something more than some gifts, a few cards and a hang-over. Four years ago, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and it was by no means certain that I would reach 50 years old. Thank goodness, that is now in the past. In celebration of my new "all clear" tumour-free status, I decided to do something to raise money for Prostate Cancer UK.

I have been amazingly lucky. I was diagnosed with cancer the very first time I had a PSA test (which I thought was going to be a formality as I had no symptoms, it just seemed like a good idea). Through a combination of a great GP in Downton and a new treatment being trialled by Consultant Urologist Chris Ogden's team at the Royal Marsden Hospital, I have not only survived it but have done so with all my bits intact and in working order. The secret was High Intensity Focused Ultrasound. After lots of MRI scanning and a god-awful operation called a 'mapping biopsy' where 74 teeny bits of my prostate were snipped out and tested, one half of the organ was zapped with a laser-like beam of ultra-sound. This turned the plump pink lump of my prostate's left hand side into a frazzled scrap of flesh. It was pretty dramatic stuff and I really hope that it sounded like a diving Spitfire, super-charger screaming and guns blazing; but I think that in reality the only noise was the sound that urologists make when they are concentrating: perhaps a slight hum or a tuneless whistle. (For more information about HIFU and the various trials, read more here: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancers-in-general/treatment/other/high-intensity-focused-ultrasound-hifu and get the info sheet here http://prostatecanceruk.org/prostate-information/our-publications/publications/hifu). Having been this lucky, I wanted to do what I could to give other men the same chance.

A few weeks ago, I put up a Just Giving page (https://www.justgiving.com/David-Blake7), set a target of £200 and started to plan a walk of about 25 miles from my partner's house in Erlestoke, across Salisbury Plain and the West Wiltshire Downs, to my home in Chilmark. I managed to persuade nearly twenty sponsors to donate various sums that amounted to over £450 (THANK YOU!) and on Sunday 15th November, I set off.

7.30 am, ready to go.

From Erlestoke, I climbed up through Erlestoke Woods and Coulston Hollow to join the Imber Range Perimeter Path (IRPP). This is sometimes a wide metalled road and sometimes a farm track. It is part of the public path that goes right round the Army's Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). As I joined it at the top of Coulston Hill I was met by a young gale that was driving across the wide expanse of Salisbury Plain.

I screwed my iPod ear buds in a bit harder, turned up the volume on my collection of 70s and 80s guilty pleasures and marched off. This is what the Army call an ARE (Acronym-Rich Environment), but as you pass the Videttes (cavalry-speak for look-out), they pit up signs in Civilian-ese so that we mere mortals can understand what they are about.

The SPTA is always being used by units on it somewhere. There are a few 'open days' when you can access the interesting places such as Imber Village, but most of it, such as the Impact Areas, remain closed off. The Army has been using the Plain since the 1890s and there is an awful lot of stuff lying about that has yet to explode. You see more innocuous things like Illume flares cases and parachutes, old smoke grenades, sandbags, spent cartridge cases and masses of barbed wire lying all over the place. Training for war is a messy business!

I passed a bit of early morning Army traffic as I made my way round Edington and on to Bratton. Redwings and fieldfares were feeding across the ploughed fields. At one point they all rose up in to the air, clacking in alarm as a sparrow hawk sliced across the track in front of me. On the top of Bratton Down I passed Bratton Camp, an Iron Age Hillfort built close to a Neolithic long barrow. This is the site of one of the greatest and most decisive battles in British history. It was here that King Alfred's army of Saxon farmers engaged Guthrum's viking army of Danes and Norsemen. Guthrum made his shield wall across the ramparts of Bratton Camp, inviting Alfred to break his army of amateurs on the mailed might of his professional warriors. Alfred lead his men into battle and they pushed the vikings back over the precipitous slope behind them, sending them skittering down into the valley to be slaughtered. Now it is a place where locals go to walk their dogs, look across the vale to Trowbridge. There's also a good view of the old cement works and when they finally come to knock down the chimney, Bratton Camp will once again be thronged with people!

I was now no longer walking directly into the wind as I skirted the Westbury Chalk Pit and walked on to Upton Cow Down where I turned down across a wide coombe and headed towards Warminster.

The trackway of the IRPP gives way to a grassy track, and then to a chalky, wet climb up the other side.

Climbing up towards Cradle Hill behind the rifle ranges, I was going up a slope that was greasy with churned up chalky clay, each footstep slipping back infuriatingly. From the top of Cradle Hill, I dropped down into Warminster Garrison and got great view of Battlesbury: another Iron Age hill fort.

Warminster Garrison is typical of many Army camps in that there is a huge amount of very neat mown grass. Garrison commandants obviously like to have things tidy, green and above all else short. What always amazes me is that, even though there is a]obviously some industrial-scale mowing operation going on, there is never a big heap of grass cuttings. I have a small lawn and a small mountain of cut grass. What does the Army do with all the cut grass?

Battlesbury Hill is one of a line of three hills in the escarpment that hangs over Warminster and the Wylye Valley like a great green wave. From the top of Battlesbury, I looked out over the garrison with its lines of parked armoured cars, lorries and tanks, still in desert camouflage from the was in Afghanistan.

In the distance, to the right of the image above, I could see Cley Hill and beyond that the wooded greensand hills of Longleat and Stourhead. As I climbed the defensive ditches of Battlesbury, I saw the last of the Clustered-Bellflower, still in purple flower after this very mild autumn.

The Clustred bell-flower is also called Dane's Blood, as it springs up wherever brave Wessex men slaughtered vikings and other Norse Ne'er-do-wells 

Then I had Middle Hill and Scratchbury Hill to climb. Siegfried Sassoon lived at Heytesbury after the Second World War - where I would cross down into the Wylye Valley. He used to walk up Scratchbury and do the kind of awfully clever thinking that only poets and novelists with large private incomes can afford. What I can never understand is why he moved from Teffont Magna, which is far prettier.

The views from Scratchbury out across the Plain are fantastic.

The white ribbon of road in the foreground is the southern military road that takes armour from Warminster onto the Plain without scuffing up the grass. It cost £20 million to build. It's great on a skateboard.

You can see deep into the Ranges; haunt of short-eared owls, hen harriers, merlins and (reputedly) big cats! It was not a great day for landscape photography. The heavy low cloud turned the light into a dull grey glow. The grass and greening fields reflected the grey-ness and the great rolling expanse of the Plain was hammered into two dimensions.

I reached the second highest point of my walk at Cotley Hill, which has a cairn on a round barrow and that means a photo has to be taken. It was a bit hurried as by now I was nearly an hour late getting to my rendezvous at Corton where joyous crowds were waiting to welcome me, so the selfie was a bit wonky.

Me - on a barrow, beside a cairn, for charity.

I was in a hurry now, as I was getting phone calls wondering what I was up to. As I dropped down into the valley and crossed the A36 into Heytesbury, I started to run and walk. Running for four strides, then walking four strides takes you forward in surges and eats up the ground. I crossed the Wylye at Heytesbury Mill, where a stoat ran down the track towards me, saw me, and zoomed back the way he had come.  I got onto a sloppy, sticky muddy track that took me to Corton and the The Dove where everyone was waiting. Rapturous applause of "What took you so long?" and "we've already had lunch" greeted me as I rolled in, puffing, red-faced and bathed in sweat.

A quick change of Tee-shirt (another one supplied by Prostate Cancer UK!), some more water and I was ready for the off. The next ten miles were much easier: a gentler pace and great company made it so much more enjoyable.

Tom and Fin, appropriately dressed in Prostate Cancer UK t-shirts,  ready to beat me with sticks should I slow down.

We worked our way up the Dairy Road to Snails Creep Hanging and then onwards up to the highest point of the whole day (204 metres) at Stockton Down. Here I introduced everyone to one of my favourite trees: a knurled old beech that is covered in carvings and memorials (some of them a bit rude!).

L-R Me, Lou George and Merlin, Fin, Laurie, Tom and DJ

From there we went through Stockton Wood, a quick dash across the A303 and then down the last two miles or so to Chilmark and home.

Then I remembered that I had left my house keys back at Lou's house. I had prepared milled wine and spaghetti bolognese for our triumphal return, so the final challenge of the day was to break into my own house. This was, of course, another photo opportunity!

If you are a burglar, please disregard this  photo.

A great day, with great friends walking across 25 miles of wonderful landscapes. Raising money for a very serious and important cause.

To all those who supported me, cured me and sustained me over the last four years - thank you!

Letting the cat out of the bag.

As the Lynx Trust UK moves towards making a formal application for a licence to release Eurasian lynx into Britain, we can expect that re-introduction of formerly native species will be the hot-topic in British conservation. It is going to be brought up in the media, in discussions at home and in the pub and in debates at conferences and seminars.

As always in nature conservation, the more heat we have in a discussion, the less light is shed. Already, people are identifying with the battle groups that are forming; so choose your side because if you are not for them, then you must be against them. There is no room for any wavering go-betweens who are likely to get crushed as the battle is joined. The 'pro-wolf' lobby are clustered around their standard bearer George Monbiot. Facing them squarely are the 'anti-predation formation', struggling to come to terms with their new role as 'antis'. Skirmishing on the sidelines are the government agencies, representative organisations and charities that like to shoot both ways.

My concerns over this issue are not to do with Rights and Wrongs, but from our failure to learn a few lessons from the past. The first one is in the title of this piece - once the cat is out of the bag, you will not get it back in. A good example of this is the recent arrival of the beaver in Britain. This species is widespread on the River Tay and is breeding in Devon on the River Otter. Other populations are likely to be blooming as I write, either through natural spread or human intervention. Like it or not the reintroduction has happened and now we have to manage it. The impact of beavers, whether it's welcome or not, is never slight.

Beavers don't fell just small trees. This ash was about 50cm diameter at the base and 25m tall when the beavers chewed it off. (Taken in a wet woodland in a Polish marsh)

We are all going to have to get used to beavers causing change in our rivers and wetlands, but also causing problems and adding both interest and cost.

Beaver impact: this kind of activity will become more common across southern England and Scotland. (Taken beside the River Bug, on the Polish - Byelorussian border)

I am amazed that this lesson has not been learned. There are enough examples in our recent and more distant history. Twenty years ago, I often talked to colleagues and friends about whether wild boar would ever be tolerated in Britain. That is no longer a moot point because as we know, the wild boar is back. Populations in Kent and East Sussex, Dorset and the Forest of Dean have been supplemented by releases of wild boar and domestic crosses throughout Devon and Cornwall, in Dorset and many more sites in Scotland than is officially recognised. Intensive shooting is able to keep a local population under some sort of control, but eventually those populations will break out. How do we know this? Because we have seen it before. The grey squirrel was released in the UK in the late 19th Century. After nearly 140 years, they have not stopped spreading. They are the mammal species with which people are most familiar, they are the wild animal that more people can get close to than any other, they cause huge harm to all our woodlands and deliver a pox virus that kills the indigenous red squirrel. Yet with all that popularity on one hand, and being Enemy Number One on the other, we still can not control their populations or spread. Surely, so much love and hate would inspire us to decisive action? Is this testimony to the squirrel's secret super-power to over-come all opposition, or could it be something to do with us?

Easily introduced: but every attempt to control it's spread and populations have met with failure.

However, if we manage to get over the general confusion that has be-devilled every wildlife release programme and every wildlife control programme in the last few decades, then some of the real issues may become more apparent. On the one hand, we love the released animals (pick a species, any species) and many people wish to see them, know they are 'out there' and are thrilled, inspired and amused by them. On the other hand, we cannot sustain their impact and will not tolerate their presence in certain circumstances such as when our legitimate aspirations are harmed. In the ensuing fire-fight between different types of animal lovers, the animal itself is forgotten and just gets on with the breeding, feeding and wandering about that is no super-power; just it's nature.

A British wild boar. Here to stay.

When the controversy over a release programme dies down, such as in the case of the white-tailed sea eagle, we can start to ask ourselves what we did right and what we could have done better. The reintroduction of the 'flying carpet' to the Hebrides and the Western Highlands has been very successful. Salmon farmers are getting to grips with how to keep it out of their cages, sheep farmers have stopped blaming it for quite so many lamb deaths as they used to and the eagles have done a huge amount for tourism.

What we can see now is that the site for reintroduction (a remote island wildlife reserve in the Inner Hebrides) may not have been the best one. It was decided upon largely as a result of the personalities involved, some historical justification and the fact that it was so remote that it would not have much impact on people. If it was to be done again, I would suggest somewhere other than the Isle of Rum. I would go for the New Forest in Hampshire. Firstly, there's masses of food for eagles: far more than in the Hebrides with lots of coastal birds and fish in shallow waters. The breeding habitat is better too: lots of trees, tall buildings and cliffs nearby for nesting and there would be a great, instant impact on people.

The lesson from the sea eagle reintroduction is that you need to get people seeing, watching, appreciating and getting used to the released animals as fast as possible. The confusion and useless debates will only be dispelled by knowledge and experience. Imagine the sight of those huge birds over the Solent or circling around the Needles. Imagine them sitting on the cranes of Southampton Water or on the mast of a yacht on the Hamble. If we all could see them for what they are, then we would soon get used to them. Personally, I like to think of them in Lymington; catching the seagull that stole my chips last time I was there.

The south of Britain is an incredibly rich habitat, able to support a great amount of wildlife. While the biodiversity it supports has been reduced (fewer species),  the numbers of animals it supports is vast. Native species such as roe deer and badger have never been as numerous as they are today. The sheer productivity of the south lands make them the natural choice for reintroductions of large animals, especially predators such as lynx.

In areas of southern England with good habitat, roe can increase quickly to achieve very high densities. These roe were part of a group of 22 males and females living out on the fields of Wiltshire while other roe deer occupied the surrounding woodlands.

Yet we keep on hearing that Scotland is the place to do it. Never mind the poor thin soils, the short growing season and general paucity of the landscape, Scotland is held up to be THE place to carry out experiments such as introducing wolves, bears and the Poll Tax.

So, back to our bagged cat. There are two proposals for reintroduction that are getting serious consideration: lynx and pine marten.

Pine marten are likely to be with us in the foreseeable future. The reintroduction in Wales is in progress and sites for an English release programme are being looked at. There is a long-term expectation that polecats will remove the problems we have with grey squirrels. Scientists in Ireland have studied the interaction between pine marten and grey squirrel. In short, when pine martens achieve a certain threshold population density, the squirrels give up and go away. The sound of cheering foresters may then scare off the pine martens, but we'll only know about that if it happens. And I do say 'if', because that density threshold is pretty high. Between the arrival of pine martens in an area and the squirrels leaving there will be a number of years. Years in which the pine martens may cause no one any bother at all, but they might also eat some protected species such as dormouse, popular species such as woodpeckers and loved pets such as rabbits, guinea pigs, kittens and poultry. The people who suffer this impact may not necessarily want to see the demise of the grey squirrel, but they may well start to get pretty cheesed off with the pine martens and the people who released them. pine martens will also cause problems for gamekeepers. Pheasants are released into the wild every autumn from pens in the woods. Foxes and badgers can be kept out of the pens by stout wire netting and electric fencing. Not so pine martens, because they climb trees. Gamekeepers will not put up with large-scale losses of expensive pheasants.

Lynx Trust UK have suggested that they are looking at remote areas with low productivity. That is my description, not thiers. I have never understood how the potential lynx habitat is mapped in the UK. Lynx hunt roe deer preferentially. They are almost roe 'specialists' and roe are very keyed into lynx, even when there are no lynx around. Such a close association between predator and prey would lead me to guess that their habitat is the same: wherever you find roe deer then you might find a lynx. One might also expect them to develop a taste for muntjac, which would be no bad thing.

Or would it? Where did you last see a roe deer or a muntjac? I recently saw roe out on the open hill in the Western Highlands of Argyll. I have also seen them living out in the large fields around Salisbury Plain and I have seen them in gardens on the edges of towns and cities. Muntjac get much closer to home. This diminutive deer is very much at home in cities where they can slip between small patches of rich habitat: from allotments, to cemeteries, to gardens, to parks and back again. If the prey are hear on our doorstep, then that makes our doorsteps potential lynx habitat. So you may think that a pine marten eating a little girl's prized guinea pigs is a PR disaster, but wait until a couple of lynx cubs pull a labrador to bits on the back lawn while the family watches in horror and up-loads it to You-Tube.

Lynx do not need a neolithic landscape like the one that previously supported them. They do very well in modern Europe in a wide variety of Twenty-first Century habitats and landscapes. If the lynx release goes ahead then expect it to succeed and to do so very rapidly.

If there is a licence granted for a release, then our further expectations should be:

• Lynx will not solve problems such as the impact we get on forestry crops from deer.
• Lynx will cause additional problems - both expected and unexpected.
• The impact of lynx will be unpredictable and the people who suffer may not be the same people who gain from it. This inequality will be at the root of much of the controversy.
• There will be death and there will be new life; joy and horror; celebration of success and disappointment at the failures. 

It should be an interesting time ...