Waste has also cropped up as a criticism of the massive lowland heath project in Dorset that’s been receiving millions in lottery and EU funding in recent years. First some interpretation of the lowland heath: its an artificial, shrubby landscape born out of our economic use of often poor sandy soils to give us a range of products and potential harvests. Woodland that once covered the area was cleared thousands of years ago and re-growth prevented by grazing with domestic animals. The removal of nutrients in the form of crops and livestock impoverished the soil and made it acidic so that gorse and heath moved in. As well as the use for grazing, the vegetation and turf were cut to provide fodder, bedding, fuel and thatch. Once that economic use declines or ceases, wild nature takes over, the heather and gorse gets leggy, and woodland regains its place. Thus a heath cannot exist in stasis without our influence.
Unsurprisingly, the area of open lowland heath has diminished over the last century, reflecting its reduced importance in our economic living, but since many of the heaths in Dorset are commons (they can’t be fenced) and are close to major urban centres, they have developed a purpose instead as spaces for outdoor recreation and enjoyment.
Others have found value in the bonanza these open spaces have afforded to the proliferation of wild species: thus sand lizards and smooth snakes if you’re a fan of reptiles; the Purbeck mason wasp, silver-studded blue butterfly and the ladybird spider if invertebrates are your thing; and woodlark, stonechat, Dartford Warbler and nightjar if you are birdist. Because of the presence of these species, many of the heaths have attracted the designation of SSSI. And because of the decline of lowland heath, targets were set for its restoration and for the re-creation of new lowland heath in the national Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP).
The BAP threatens the concept of wildness itself
Peter Marren, writing in his book on rare wildflowers reflected on the impact that a target driven action plan would have (7):
”There is a new concern, which is evidently widely felt though seldom expressed publicly: that the envisaged level of intervention in the BAP may in some cases come to threaten the concept of wildness itself.”
Peter could have been talking about the Dorset heathland project because the scale of killing off of wildness has been huge. Thus the Hardy’s Egdon Heath Project, driven by Natural England, cleared some 1,000 hectares of mixed young woodland and scrub from different heathland sites. Five grazing projects were set up to reintroduce livestock for conservation grazing as a control against scrub and tree reinvasion. In other areas heather was cut and 48 hectares of gorse coppiced, while 204 hectares of bracken were cleared. Some 100 hectares of pine plantation were also cleared to re-create heathland areas (8).
The RSPB are quite cold in describing how they reclaim their own Dorset heathland sites: pine and birch (and presumably gorse) are cleared using chainsaws; heather is mown using a tractor and forage harvester; and bracken is controlled by treating it with herbicide spray (9). They give their Dorset heathland project prime billing as a case study in their report from 2001 on large scale habitat restoration entitled Futurescapes. The RSPB loves the BAP, as is shown by this report. The Species and Habitat Action Plans in the UK BAP bring with them funding and provide a justification for the RSPB land management practices that more often than not are a farmification of the landscape. To them the BAP target of 6,000 hectares of recreation of heathland by 2005 was peanuts, and thus they are shooting for 32,000 ha by 2020 (10).
All good news if you are a conservation professional, but other eyes have been able to pick up on the flaws in the Dorset heathland project, especially the wasteful aspects of it. An appraisal of sustainability by the Forum for a Future notes that no provision had been made to make use of the tree, gorse and heather clearings, which could have found use in wood fuel systems in community heating schemes, rather than be burnt on site or just left. The language of their criticisms is measured, such as when they advocate a reduction in use of energy hungry heavy machinery, but even they must have been shocked by the use of helicopters to spray herbicide on the bracken, when with more humanscale techniques, it could have been cleared and composted from some areas. They also noted that the herbicide spray was killing off ecologically important fern species.
Perhaps their most damning criticism is that the Dorset heaths project appears to lack a shared, locally agreed long term vision and overall plan for multiple land use and resource protection, in spite of the fact that it has received Heritage Lottery funding and EU Life funding. They allude to the fact that the project has more to do with the aspirations of conservation professionals than it does to the local population, and indicate the tensions that have existed (11):
“It is proving difficult to achieve consensus with local residents and landowners in urban and some urban fringe areas about the best ways of managing the heathland, e.g. some people don’t want trees removed or fences put up, they don’t want to see any changes.”
Conservation professionals are not big on accepting criticism, and so their voice comes through in the appraisal report when it is suggested that the resistance to tree clearance on some sites is due to a vocal minority, or from people who have only recently moved to live near the heathland – this in spite of the fact that it is known that some local conservationists are content with the land as it is.
The contempt is further shown in a recent story in the Dorset Echo (12). The Parish councilors of Hurn and Christchurch cllrs have objected for a second time to a plan by Dorset Wildlife Trust to cut down 5,000 pine and birch trees on Sopley Common so that it can be restored to heathland. The Hurn councilors have accused the wildlife trust of having a "cavalier attitude" because they have not been prepared to discuss their objections. Alastair Cook, a press spokesman for the Wildlife Trust played the SSSI card, hiding behind the designation to claim that there was a legal obligation on the Wildlife Trust as owners of the common to cut down the trees. He went on to say:
"As for being cavalier, it may be that our legal obligations do not allow us to negotiate with the parish council."
Not much hope there for a locally agreed long -term ‘master plan’ or landscape vision for the project! What depresses me most about all this is the awful destruction. Surely it is too late to want to re-impose some notion of nature for the species that conservation professionals want to see when there is something quite unnatural in the clearing of often quite mature trees. It can’t be called nature conservation because it’s killing the wildness by chopping down the natural return of mostly native species. And this grooming of nature goes much further than just clearing trees. The Purbeck Mason Wasp requires exposures of clay and a ready supply of water, and also some Ecleris moth caterpillars which feed on the new shoots of bell heather and cross leaved heath. The heathland project has used a digger to create areas of bare clay and has groomed the nearby heather with controlled winter burning to encourage vigorous new growth. Is this nature grooming natural? Is it in any way wild?
I want to leave you with another example of nature grooming, this time from an RSPB press release about the habitat requirements of the black grouse. The black grouse is one of those examples of a species given particular attention in conservation circles so that it ends up being symbolic of the management prowess of conservation professionals and, yes, there is a Species Action Plan and targets for black grouse in the BAP (13). The news release reported on a study that made a link between falling black grouse numbers and the maturing of commercial forestry plantations as their canopy closed over the heather, blaeberry and other plants that provide food, shelter and cover for chicks (14). Black grouse do better in areas of birch and other native woodland and scrub, but Dr James Pearce Higgins, lead author of the study, points to a much wider range of habitat requirements for maximising numbers of the birds:
"We're not saying that extensive forest is necessarily a bad thing; but for black grouse to be successful demands a delicate balance to be maintained between several types of habitat. The ideal landscape for these birds contains a mix of heather moorland, rough grassland, wet flushes and open woodland or scrub.….. The challenge is to maintain the required mix of forest and moorland habitats within a commercially managed landscape”.
It’s a wonder that this bird ever existed in wild nature before we took to nature grooming and killing all the wildness.
Mark Fisher 23 April 2007