Perhaps understandably many people I meet often
have the strange idea that managing land for wildlife means doing nothing, just
letting everything go and take its “natural” course. If only that was the case,
which I suppose it could be if the objective was to allow everything to revert
to woodland, but even there it would require managing in one form or another to
maximise its benefits. Anyway there’s no shortage of trees in the general sense
here – yet !!!
Where we live certain habitats have all but disappeared in
recent years, the final nail in the coffin was the removal in 2008 of the
requirement to put 10% of land out of production, a process known in English as
“Set Aside”, (to leave fallow / en jachère). This has lead to just about every
last piece of land that isn’t woodland and that can be used for cereals to be
ploughed up as mentioned elsewhere. Even in 1996 when we purchased our house
and three hectares things were bad enough leaving little choice for us but to at
least try and create a little oasis of decent habitat and manage the bulk of it,
(about 80%), as “rough meadow or natural grassland”. The remaining 20% was
already trees or woodland which I have also been slowly changing aided by a
couple of serious storms that helped with the thinning process.
This winter I’m trying to catch up on one particular section
that has been neglected for a couple of years more than it should have been
with a danger of some species being temporarily lost due to brambles, scrub and
small trees swamping them.
In particular
there are quite a large number of Greater Butterfly Orchids that started to
show after we had been here about 8 or 9 years on this part of the land and
it’s a tricky balancing act with them. It’s quite strange that I haven’t found
this Orchid anywhere else remotely near our property or the Loose Flowered
Orchids that we have a couple of although they must have been around here
historically. Bee, Pyramidal and Lizard Orchids that have also popped up on the
land are to be seen locally in the area so not a surprise, but it does show
what can happen even on land that has been intensively cultivated given a
little time.
It’s also an area with a few different species of violet
that need to be given a bit of light and space, all common species but important
for the Fritillary butterflies we have here that use them - Weavers, Queen of
Spain and Silver washed, all fairly common species as well but starting to
struggle with the steady reduction of available plants. Many of the violet plants that do manage to survive are
often by the roadsides that are constantly cut to the ground giving little
chance for any eggs or caterpillars.
Masses of Lung wort, Pulmonaria,
flourishes in this section as well and again although a common plant it’s just
so important as a long flowering early insect food source, especially for
Bumble bees when there is little else around in February.
More of this later, Chris