Has the time arrived for landscape scale re-wilding finally arrived?

The Safari saw a headline a couple of days ago.

English farmland could be cut by 9% to hit green targets

The article beneath the headline made for interesting reading and although it might seem like 'another' threat to farming from an already precieved as farming-unfriendly government there are fantastic opportunities to be had for our beleaguered wildlife, not forgetting the the UK is one of the most wildlife depleted countries on the planet. By coincidence for Christmas we had received this book and read it during the bad weather that prevented going out on safari in January.

We're a big fan of re-wildling and that doesn't mean land abandonment which many folk out there seem to think it does. To maximise the diversity of wildlife an area can hold there does need to be some management otherwise one vegetation type will tend to dominate (dependent  on local variations in soil composition/moisture etc). However, and this is the biggy, the management doesn't have to be done by man, although some works like stopping us peatland drains and removing invasive non-native species eg Rhododenron ponticum need to be done by us humans. What happened before us humans brought fire, axe and sheep? The answer is wild animals would have shaped the vegetation across landscape scale areas. 

Does anyone watch Wildearth TV? The reserves to highlight southern Africa's majestic animals they use all used to be farmland but now have fabulous ecosystems thanks to letting the land recover from cattle overgrazing and introducing larger native animals. We don't have Elephants and drove our nearest equivalent, Aurochs, to extinction many many years ago but we do still have plenty of proxy animals that would do the job of long lost wild cattle, horses and Wild Boars. We have deer two, although only two are native, two are naturalised and are 'probably?' OK the other two are definitely not OK - more about those later. 

Several of the reserves we visit use proxy animals to manage the habitats mainly for specific species/associations of birds although in a couple of cases it is shorter vegetation to enhance the overall diversity of wild flowers that is the target.  Here are some examples of our favourite management tools going about their work.

Longhorn Cattle

Redpoll Cattle

Mixed cattle including a Belted Galloway

Exmoor Pony

Redpoll Cattle

Redpoll Cattle

Redpoll bull

Highland Cattle

Highland Cattle

Carneddau Pony

 

We should have drawn the southern boundary line to include the steep Patterdale Common and the northern boundary line to include Matterdale Common too, basically taking in all the western watershed  into Ullswater from Grisedale Beck (= Wild Boar stream) to Aira Beck at Dockray. Arnison Crag (bottom right probably alludes to White Tailed Eagles, Whelp Side (bottom left) - Wolves, Hart Side (top centre) - deer possibly Fallow Deer as Red Deer males are known as stags not harts, Swineside Knott - Wild Boar. Now what do all these creatures have in common? They're all woodland species (the White Tailed Eagle is a wetland/coastal species but often requires big trees close by for nesting), yet if you were to climb to the top of Birks above Black Crag and looked slightly west of north you'd barely see a single bush never mind a whole tree. There's got to be an opportunity to relieve that area, 26 sq kms and at least probably that much again going up to Dockray, of its sheep, do some tree planting, allow some tree regeneration, prevent any non-natives establishing (need humans to do that), bring in suitable hardy cattle and pony species (there's an income stream for the farmers - who might no longer be called farmers but Landscape and Biodiversity Stewards (and hopefully be handsomely subsidised for becoming such) - - would 'Conservation Grade Meat' bring a premium price to their pockets?) The question of free-roaming pigs is a little more tricky but there could be the potential to use inobtusive electric fencing enclosures which can easily be moved around to prevent the pigs over-grazing, or better still what about good old fashioned proper job wild Wild Boar? Wild Boar could be controlled (in sustainable numbers) by those  members of society who like killing things, instead of shooting millions of tame non-native Pheasants how about learning how to stalk Wild Boar and use the meat...hmmm WB sausages - very nice indeedy. And therein lies another issue - how do you  prevent the cattle and ponies over grazing? In the old days those whelping Wolves would have kept our beasts on the move not lettin g them settle in any one area too long. Now there's no chance of bringing Wolves into this area and that could potentially be a problem, we're not sure what the answer is - someone walking behind them with a sharp stick??? Oh you mean a shepherd! 

Now all this might sound like pie in the sky but it is beginning to happen, even in the lake District NP with the new Skiddaw Forest Cumbria Wildlife Trust project, the more established Wild Ennerdale and the Restoring Hardknott Forest Project which aims to create and restore 630 ha native woodland and other wildlife rich habitats on what was recently one of the Lake District's largest commercial coniferous forests - there's another discussion as to whether or not foerestry plantations should have ever been allowed in a National Park in the first place but it is possible that the trees were planted before the NP status was confered - we don't know. Neither do we know if Skiddaw Forest or Hardknott intend to have proxy grazers, Wild Ennerdale and Wild Haweswater definitely do.

Not far to the south and west of the map above another exciting re-wildling project is afoot. This time it's not an area or a habitat but an iconic species that was extirpated from this area many years ago, namely White Tailed Sea Eagles aka Ernes (Heron Crag, on the main Ambleside to Keswick road, and Arnside Knott across the bay etc are place names that allude to their former presence). We can't wait to see this project get off the ground - if only to get WTE on our garden fly-over list. It would be great to watch them catching Mullet off the mouth of the River Wyre or plucking feral Canada Geese from the shores of Windermere in front of gobsmacked tourists. Let's hope it gets the go-ahead before too long but we do have some reservations about any potential impact on nearby seabird colonies at St Bee's Head and RSPB's Hodbarrow reserve and also on potential distubance to the eagles themselves just from the sheer numbers of people on the fells these days. Anyway fingers crossed it happens soon...and they don't 'disappear' like almost all of the re-introduced Red Kites have.

Moving on...our National Parks are probably where most of the effort should be concentrated and not only the upland  ones as there are other areas that would benefit such as some of the former Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, our nearest one, the Forest of Bowland, is about as an unnatural area of little beauty as you can imagine, it could be so much better. There are three main land owners, the water authority who to give them their due are doing their but but the other two need a bit of persuading, one of whom is the King, Charles III, who allegedly has conservation running through his blue blooded veins - it certainly doesn't show up there on his hunting estate nor at Balmoral (in Scotland) where if he were to re-wild his estates rather than haveing them as killing grounds maybe some of his neighbours might follow his lead. Come on Charlie Boy grasp the Nettle what's stopping you?

9% of farmland given over to nature might sound like a very frightening amount to some folk but when you consider that much of that 'farmland' is barely productive at the moment and sheep aren't a necessary staple in our diets and that we pay heavily to subsidise them along with often paying through taxed to drain land for them, then pay again for flood defences to cope with the increased water flow off the mountain - there's nothing wetter that wet long grass but there isn't much long grass up there its all been nibbled away, and then we pay again in increased insurance premiums to cover the losses when floods do happen. When you look at it that way and the very few jobs provided by that amount of land it makes sense to us to restore its biodiverisity and enrich its landscape. There's probably quite a few more jobs available in the latter scenario as well.

Going back to those members of our society who like killing things, they could become conservationists too by doing some essential culling of some of our non-native nightmares - we're looking at you Muntac Deer (the carnage we saw on the roads between Oxford and Southampton last year was horrendous, the carnage they cause to our woods and associated wildlife is even worse), Sika Deer, Grey Squirrel, Canada Geese to name but a few. They could fulfil their bloodlust while providing our beleagured wildlife a very helpful service rather than being  part of the problem. Not sure about the freal geese and the squirrels but venison should be almost free in this country there's so many deer causing so many problems. The squirrels and geese - well there's lots (far too many!) dogs n cats that need feeding, would the pet food industry be interested in free range produce; shot with non-toxic ammo though. How about "Eat the Aliens" as a slogan?

Not just woodland/forest either, parts of Somerset flooded again last week not as devastatring as a few years ago but enough to show there's anm on-going issue -  the book describes opportunities for large scale wetland restoration in various areas of the country especially Somerset...Pelicans? Yes please!

all well and good this know-it all townie  - Community buy-in essential - aging multi-generational sheep farmer how to engage and encourage them to change/retrain - economics, government initiatives and incentives, the policy is just about there

Fewer sheep, fewer problem deer, more Wild Boar, Beavers, Moose and Wisents please and Nightingales which used to nest in Lancashire just about living memory. The Safari is going to admit to watching a TV show called  A Place in the Sun, when they visit France the sound of the local area being viwwed by the punters is always Nightingales. And can we have more Corncrakes which an elderly relative now passed away could remember calling on our family farm when she was a young girl - oh did we not mention we're not just a another suburban townie keyboard warrior know it all.

All we want is a future abounding with wildlife rather than the currrent position of letting it dwindle away with the shifting baseline getting lower and lower despite the odd success story like the Bittern comeback

and Cetti's Warbler colonisation,

these are just feel better blips on the otherwise inexorable downward spiral to mass extinction on these isles. Being closer to 70 than 60 now were unlikely to see the benefits of all this good work even if it starts at first light tomorrow morning. But given the opportunity wildlife can spring back very quickly as the Knepp project down south has shown - somewhere we'd like to visit for a good shuffy round one day. All it needs is the will and some sensitive management and our future generations will be looking back asking why didn't they do it sooner. 

There has to be community buy-in to these projects. After all you can't just turf folk off their land, well ntot in a civilised society you can't. But how do you convince an aging sheep farmer whose family have been sheep farmers for generations to give his land over to nature, even with compensation what is he going to do next? What's in it for hime? Can he quickly learn a new set of livestock skills to look after cattle rather than sheep, can he become a woodsman - does he have the time to wait for trees to grow so he can harvest them - does he really feel comfortable running wildlife watching safaris - questions that those affected will need answering. Maybe the government coud waive the recently introduced inheritance tax for those farmers that would be affected by the tax that join the schemes. We'd much rather se a lot of carrot and not a lot of stick in this transition to a better state otherwise there's going to be a lot of resentment. It's going to be hard enough to get the status quo vested interests on board as it is. Look how difficult it continues to be to get raptor persecution to stop or even a prosecution on the few occassions there's enough evidence.

Here's some pics of recent 'winners'

Little Egret

Spoonbill

Roe Deer

Tree Bee

and some recent 'losers'

Corn Bunting

Skylark

Willow Tit

Tree Sparrow

And don't forget it's not just about birds, it's as much if not more about soil improvement (structure, microbiome and losing toxins), mosses, lichens, liverworts, fungi, the herb layer, invertebrates (see above), fish, amphibians and reptiles as well as the birds and mammals - it's restoration of a whole (at least as whole as can be) functioning ecosystem including these chaps - one day? Maybe the wilder parts of NW Scotland first, can't really see England going for Wolves anytime soon...but you never know, if you don't ask  you certainly won't get!

Lynx should be out there soon. However, numpties recently illegally releasing them inappropriately might have added a few years on to that wait though.

Anyways it's all food for thought so what do you think? 

Where to next? We expect to be out  on safari again later this week - when the weather imroves, honking it down today!

In the meantime let us know how much wilder your outback could be given a few sympathetic changes.

Two trips to the Southside

The Safari has been enjoying the many superb pics of the recent Leach's Petrels along our coast - this one by young EM is a real humdinger! And what about these - awesome and a clever trick to get them. Unfortunately the wind didn't stay strong enough long enough or from the right direction for us a to get a pic of the little mites, yes we are a bit disappointed not to add Leach's Petrel to our Year Bird Challenge tally! 

We had to go down to the Southside on family duties on Thursday and to tire Monty out a little before we went visiting we had an hour's mooch around the excellent Lunt Meadows reserve. We say it's excellent but today it was rather quiet. The drive down had got our hopes up for a good morning's birding with a Jay flying over the car and both Buzzard and Kestrel seen close to the roadside in quick succession.

At the first screen the cattle were close by, Monty couldn't see them but he could sure smell them and was rather 'interested'! There is a small herd of Redpoll that undertake conservation grazing to create hummocky grassland for breeding waders and mud wallows for the birds to feed in.

We're not sure what species of Mayweed it is but the 'field' looked really beautiful and the cattle contrasted very nicely against it. with this fellow so close we weren't going to hop over the fence to investigate either and it's probably a good job he couldn't see Monty behind the screen too.

At the back behine the distant cows a small hint of movement caught our eye. A Brown Hare had poked it's head up out of a bit of a ditch for a look-around - our first of the year.

Something spooked it and it shot off at a slow gallop for a hare but a bit quick for us and the camera.

Bird-wise there was only a small flock of Lapwings on the pool and they were soon flushed by something unseen and flew over to the far pool - nothing for it but to follow them. 

We passed a couple of Red Admirals and a Small White butterfly on the way.

The sun came out at the next screen and nicely lit up the Lapwings which had now joined a larger flock.

With all the strong winds we expected there might have been a more exotic wader from more northern latitudes or even North America in the Lapwing flock or at least a Ruff, but no there were just a handful of Snipe secreted around the marginal vegetation.

There were a few gulls loafing in the shallows and snoozing on the small muddy island. Mostly Herring Gulls,  a couple of Lesser Black Backs and four Black Headed Gulls, but with the Black Heads was an obvious odd-man-out - a first winter Mediterranean Gull...Result!

A Water Rail was far too quick for us as it legged it across the mud below the screen, that was about the best of the rest and with time getting near to visiting time we legged it too.

We had one trick up our sleeve, close to the reserve is a barn which holds a pair of Little Owls. It's always worth the two minute detour even if we'd done it unsuccessfully a few times before - today was our lucky day! There in the dark recesses of the barn was a Little Owl (174, YBC #148) sitting on a beam and fortunately against the pale timber so a pic was possible for our Year Bird Challenge. Good to see one as we totally dipped out on this species in 2014 and 2016.

Now time was pressing but there are two roads you can go by but in the short run we chose to retrace our steps right rather than continue left. A good choice, turning off the 'main' road down the lane we used to call Ratty Road when we were birding round here on our bike many years ago a family of Grey Partridges (175) flew almost over our bonnet. Now had we been on our bike we could have just stopped but in the car we had to drive nearly half a mile to find somewhere to turn round and hope they'd still be in view. Only one was but maybe fortunately it was one of the adults, the well grown chicks were nowhere to be seen in the recently harvested field, they must have gone into the ditch at the side of the little wood. But how annoying it should stand behind the only remaining stalk of stubble in the whole field! (YBC #149).

Such exquisitely marked birds it's a real shame they are now so rare and generally hard to come by when in our youth we practically used to trip over them in these same fields. 

All too soon it followed the rest of the family into the ditch with a last look over its shoulder.

The following day we were taken by CR to the big reserve Martin Mere (there we've said it - we normally refer to it as the reserve we don't mention by name due to the similarity with 'our' reserve Marton Mere)

With a gentle wind just west of north this was going to be a Pink Footed Goose day and so it transpired as we saw a couple of flocks at height heading that way when we dropped Monty off at his minders. More were seen on the drive down.

The wink-wink sound of Pink Footed Geese wafted down from on high as small flocks began to arrive

Landing gear down - for the first time in 750 miles?

More and more arrived in larger and larger flocks too...spectacular!

They were landing out of sight in one of the reserve's fields away from the hide we were in so we had a little walk.

The next hide we stopped in overlooks a small pool which had a couple of Black Headed Gulls that were fishing for 3-Spined Sticklebacks with some success.

They were joined by a Heron which was successful too, many times! It all seemed a bit too easy and not good if you were a Stickleback!

Look at that - it must have somehow caught two at once but ended up dropping one - lucky fish!

Also on the pool briefly were a pair of Gadwall 

and a couple of Coot.

We didn't get a pic of the lovely Moorhen and totally missed the very brief visit by the Kingfisher.

Moving down to the farthest hide we searched through the scattered flock of Lapwings 

for a Ruff and eventually found one, a long way off. So far away this pic is enlarged by 200%

At long last Ruff (176) goes on the year list, how come it's taken until mid-September to come across one of these? And it just about qualifies for inclusion on our Year Bird Challenge bringing up our 150 species photographed. hopefully we'll be able to get a much better replacement pic before the year end - won't we?

Another Kingfisher zipped past along the dyke but didn't stop, while in the the dyke that joins this one an injured over-summering Whooper Swan won't have long for its mates to arrive from Iceland, they're usually not too far behind the Pink footed Geese.

The wander round the rest of the reserve didn't give us much more of note so we decided to cut our losses and head to Mere Sands Wood, a cracking little reserve we often helped out at during its formative years in the early 80s.

The main feeding station was quiet except for a couple of Chaffinches and a family of Dunnocks so we didn't stay long and anyway our main 'target' was away across the far side of the reserve. On the way we came across a nice Nuthatch (didn't get those here in the 80s) and a recently fledged still mostly spotty Robin at the woodland feeding station, no sight nor sound of the recent Willow Tit, the first here for a number of years although they were regular in the 80s.

A flock of Long Tailed Tits entertained us briefly at the first hide down this end of the lake but it was the next hide we wanted to be at. It was already full of eager photographers who told us the Kingfisher had been about but not showing at all well. Several perches have been positioned over the water to enable photographers to get 'the' shot...providing the bird behaves...which it wasn't today.

We waited a while hearing Jays shrieking in the distance until someone gave the call 'Kingfisher'...it landed on the most distant perch almost totally obscured by the tall heads of Willowherb from our seat. No good - it had gone by the time we'd managed to get the camera to focus on the perch rather than the intervening vegetation - it wouldn't have been 'the' shot either - too distant. There'll be more opportunities later in the year when the vegetation has either been cut or died back for the winter.

Leaving the gang of photographers to their wait we continued round the reserve which being mid-afternoon was pretty quiet. We settled in the empty hide overlooking the other large lake and tried to get some dragonfly pics without success - using our phone as they were too close for the long lens! We'd got a Common Darter on the bridge at the reserve entrance but that was settled on the handrail.

This time we were after flight shots - yes with the phone! - as the dragons flew back and forth around the vegetation just outside the window.

We only managed a couple of very blurry shots one of which might have been OK if the dragon had been within the depth of field - how annoying.

Heading back for a last blast at the Kingfishers we passed an interesting looking fungus - the reserve has a superb variety of fungi but they are a group we know little about so if anyone out there can identify this one we'd be grateful. We don't even possess a field guide for fungi - we did have one but it seems to have disappeared off our bookshelf sometine in the distant past.

A Raven 'cronking' overhead was another species we wouldn't have dreamed of finding here in the 80s - had to go a long way to the nearest ones at that time. 

No further Kingfisher action was reported by the photographers and we missed the opportunity for a great Jay-in-flight shot as it flew across the lake but didn't land in the nearby tree as it had apparently done earlier. The only bird about was a moulting drake Shoveler which has a face a little bit like a Yankee Blue Winged Teal. It was preening like mad and like a dog chasing its tail it spun round and round rather comically trying to nibble those hard to reach parts.

A funny looking sheet rainbow heralded the downpour that would soak us on the way back to the car - should have got a phone pic of that it was a bit weird, never seen anything like it before. Despite the short sharp shower, missing an Osprey and only seeing one of the four Marsh Harriers in the morning it was a great day out on safari.
Where to next? It's the weekend so anything could happen anywhere!
In the meantime let us know who's reaching those hard to reach places in your outback.