Signs of Summer by Peter Welsh, Ecologist

Summer is arriving in a rush,  I hope you have all been able to enjoy the last few weeks out and about in the countryside as well as in your gardens or local parks.  Maybe you have also been watching things unfold on Springwatch on the TV.  It is a wonderful advert for the joys and variety of wildlife to be experienced in Britain – and I must remind you that we have loads of fantastic places to visit in the Dales.

Malham Tarn

If you are coming to the Malham area, please do try to fit in a walk around the Tarn and especially our boardwalk across Tarn Fen and Moss (dramatic flowers like globeflower, bogbean and a variety of orchids as well as lots of birdsong in the willow carr); go to Upper Wharfedale for the beautiful hay meadows and riverside walks; and try a visit to Hudswell Woods near Richmond for dramatic woodland walks and to learn about the grassland restoration works.  We are reintroducing cattle grazing here, with the help of our tenant farmer, and plan to work with local schools and others to spread seed of lost plants like wood cranesbill, bird-foot trefoil, hay rattle and cowslip.

Nature is however easily upset by the things we humans get up to!  One of the items mentioned on Springwatch was the ‘State of Nature’ report that a number of nature conservation organisations compiled.  It is a truly shocking report, charting massive declines in many of our best loved species as well predicting the loss of many species from the British countryside unless we change our ways. 

Bogbean Plant

Examples of the declines are the reduction in hedgehog numbers by over 30% since 2000 and of nearly 80% fewer small tortoiseshell butterflies over the same period. Not all is doom and gloom and there have been notable success stories for some individual species (e.g. red kites and ospreys) and individual Sites of Special Scientific Interest are in a much better state than they were.  So what else can we do? 

Supporting conservation bodies, volunteering and doing what we can in our own gardens and neighbourhoods will clearly help.

Otherwise I think one of the lessons is that many of our native species cannot survive in small and isolated patches or islands of habitat.  I suggest we need future agri-environment schemes to focus more on working with farmers and landowners in areas that are already ‘semi-natural’ to restore natural variety (e.g. a mosaic of grassy; heathy; wet; scrubby and wooded patches). 

This would recreate areas of countryside that are diverse enough to allow species to survive dramatic weather events and to adapt and move with longer-term climate changes.  I also believe we would benefit hugely from having some larger nature reserves, as in many other countries across the world, with these becoming valued by society as core refuges for our native species and as places that can act as sources for re-colonisation elsewhere.

 

 

Attitudes to conservation

My wife and I were lucky enough to miss the worst of March’s weather – as we were trekking in the Himalayas in Nepal!  It was cold up at the higher altitudes (as expected) but warm and sunny during the days and all in all sounded a lot better than the shock snow drifts back home. . .

It was fascinating to contrast life and attitudes to nature in Nepal with ours back in the UK.   There, as in many developing countries, the big nature challenge seems to be what to do with their more natural land.  These areas, often declared as National Park, are now wanted by the rapidly expanding human population.  In Nepal the surviving more natural land is threatened by communities needing fuel, wood and land for growing their crops or grazing their livestock.  Their National Parks are still pretty well protected but the pressure is a difficult one for politicians to resist – nature versus the livelihood of poor and hungry people!

In the UK we destroyed our natural land many centuries ago; however there is still a political choice to be made.  Here that choice is between the economic pressures of other land uses against the restoration of nature.  For example, some people feel that our nature conservation legislation is too strong and is inhibiting the economic recovery.  I think that our Sites of Special Scientific Interest and agri-environmental schemes have helped restore a core natural resource – but my particular concern is that we still have very little land that is looked after primarily for nature (nature reserves or the equivalent of National Parks in most countries across the world).

And one particular thing upset me in Nepal – that was that there, as so many places in the world, people set fire to nature reserves in the name of conservation!  Why do we humans love burning the land?  I’m mystified.  The most common argument seems to be that we’ve burnt areas for a long time and as the species have got used to it then we should continue.  I don’t agree and instead think that wherever possible we should try to promote more natural ‘processes’.   And I think there are very few places in the world where regular fire is a natural thing.  Maybe small localized burning for rare species that might have become adapted, or as fire breaks – but otherwise let’s stop striking matches!

Back in the Yorkshire Dales it has been a really tough spring for the local wildlife and very difficult for our tenant farmers.  Most have not lost huge numbers of livestock as has been reported for some areas of the country.  However it has been a hard lambing-time and because of the cold and lack of grass growth the farmers have been forced to spend much more than usual on buying-in extra feed for their sheep and cattle.

Let’s get out and celebrate – because spring has arrived at last!  With the rather warmer weather, all the delayed indicators of spring are suddenly appearing en masse.  The birds are arriving from Africa (warblers; chiff-chaff; wheatear; swallows and martins; etc) and even up at Malham and Wharfedale the primroses and celandines are in flower and the hazel catkins are waving in the breeze.  We look forward to butterflies, early-purple orchids, cowslips, bird’s-eye primrose and then bluebells in the weeks to come.  And please do let us know of any interesting sightings you find across our Dales properties – including the first cuckoo. . .

Peter Welsh, Ecologist

Is Spring Ever coming?

What is the weather up to!?  There have been intermittent signs of spring in the Yorkshire Dales but mostly it has felt like mid winter again through most of this last month.

It’s been a long, long winter, tough on wildlife and tough on our tenant farmers and it seems there could be even more to come, but when the sun shines it is now starting to feel more spring-like.  The snowdrops have been out in the woods for a while now – and a great early show they’ve made (even though snowdrops and daffodils are almost certainly introduced and naturalised rather than native to this area. . . ).  Ramsons (wild garlic) and lords and ladies are bursting into leaf in the woods; blue-moor grass and cotton-grasses are in bud on the fells; there are catkins on the willows and hazels and the birds are starting to sing (lots of small birds in the woods; lapwing, curlew and oystercatcher on the pastures and moors).

Recently I went on trip to Cumbria with six of our tenant farmers.  We visited a Trust farmer near Kendal who has been grazing Galloway cattle on a limestone hill at Sizergh for over fifteen years now.

We made the trip as an opportunity to discuss some of the issues around livestock farming when trying to conserve nature at the same time as attempting to make a profit and a living for the family!   It is not always an easy balance to strike and our tenants work hard and for long hours with constant uncertainties as to their incomes and outgoings.   However we had a really good discussion – focussing on the economics and practicalities of farming cattle.

From my ecological perspective, I see grazing as a crucial ‘natural process’ that is needed to modify and diversify the habitats and ecosystem.  Cattle are animals close to the natural grazers that existed in Europe before man’s influence changed the landscape so dramatically over the last five thousand years or so.  And sheep, although not originally native to Western Europe, can also do a good job at mimicking natural grazing impacts.

On the trip we saw the Galloway cattle helping restore a great environment of mixed grassland and heath with patches of scrub and woodland. They do this by grazing and trampling the ground but in a variable way across the area which creates diversity.  The result is fantastic for the variety of flowers (like dark red helleborine orchids) and insects (eg butterflies and the yellow meadow ant – with lots of their ant hills left unaffected by the cattle).

The system works for the farmer as well, even with slow maturing calves, because the input costs are very low (next to no supplementary feed; no housing costs; no vet bills) and because of some agri-environmental scheme support.  Here the cattle clearly browse poisonous plants like bracken and yew but with no ill effects (they seem to know when to stop and have enough other forage to keep them healthy).  This area also has lots of walkers, runners and dogs – and the farmer told us that the cattle don’t bat an eyelid, ignoring all the strange human activities around them!

The tenant farmers were interested in this low input and low output system but were clear that it cannot work everywhere and that more productive cattle systems can also work for nature as well as the farm business.

NB.  We also had a good sandwich lunch at the National Trust pub nearby, the Strickland Arms – recommended!

Until next time – and comments; questions always welcome.

Peter Welsh

Hello from our Ecologist

Hello. My name is Peter Welsh and I’m the National Trust’s ecologist for the land we own in the Yorkshire Dales (nearly 20,000 acres centred around Malham Tarn and in Upper Wharfedale).

I am really lucky to have this great job – and want to use this blog to share some of the excitements as well as a way of having a discussion about what we are doing/should be doing and why!

I think there are two key reasons for us looking after nature in the Yorkshire Dales (indeed everywhere): –

o One is that surely mankind has a duty of care to the rest of life on this amazing planet of ours – sadly we’ve proved to be pretty good at damaging and destroying nature and it is ever more important that we strive to save and sustain what we’ve got left.

o And secondly nature and wild areas are an essential and fantastic resource for people – for inspiration, for enjoyment, for exercise, ultimately for economic reasons, but perhaps most importantly for opportunities to escape the stress of the hectic lives we lead!

My plan is to start by posting a blog every fortnight. I want to describe what is happening on our land in the Dales – how nature and farming (plus other land management) changes through the seasons; as well as writing some pieces about why we are doing things and what other options we have.

Maybe we can tackle some of the big questions that I’m sometimes asked –
• Why conserve nature when we should be producing more food?
• How much nature do we need?
• Does nature need to be managed?
• Can we balance nature, farming and other land uses?
• How do you get on with the farmers?
• And other more local questions too –
 About otters arriving at Malham
 Are bird numbers decreasing?
 What are we going to do about ash disease?
 How has the history of the monasteries influenced today’s landscape and nature in the Dales?
 Where are the best walks to see flowers and birds?

But that is more than enough introduction, so to finish this first blog, just a few notes on January and February in the Dales –

o A couple of weeks laid low with the dreaded flu bug didn’t help my mood – but rays of sunshine across a frozen Malham Tarn helped lift the gloom!
o We’ve had a prolonged period of frost and snow – maybe what we used to think of as a typical winter, not bitterly cold but nonetheless a really hard time for the birds that are still around and it remains to be seen how numbers of residents like wren, nuthatch and kingfisher hold up into spring.

o It has also been a hard time for our tenant farmers and their livestock (the snow cover has meant lots of extra feeding of the animals – but with prices for lamb sales dropping and feed and diesel costs rocketing).
o Our rangers have been setting motion sensitive cameras around the tarn and got some great shots of the new otter residents as well as deer and birds.
o Let’s think forward to spring and summer with one summer scene. . .

Next blog in two weeks – but in the meantime please ask me any questions or let me have any comments – and do also follow us on facebook
(https://www.facebook.com/YorkshireDalesNT)