Tanks, mortars and exploding shells...the nature reserve that’s a true national treasure
COMMENT
FAR in the distance, hidden in a valley, a battery of big guns roared, and a mile in front of us a sequence of shells exploded in bright orange flashes, spewing chalk and soil high into the air.
Seconds later, with black smoke billowing over the grassland, the thud of the explosions rolled across the downs as slower sound caught up with speedier light.
Nearby the crew of a huge, tracked AS-90 artillery vehicle got a message over the radio and raced into a flower-rich meadow in search of a new firing position.
Welcome to one of Britain’s most important nature reserves.
The Daily Express was given special access last week to Salisbury Plain, 94,000 acres of Wiltshire between Bulford in the east and Warminster in the west, an area as big as the Isle of Wight which is not only one of the Army’s top training areas but also a wildlife and archaeological wonderland.
Most of it is made up of sites of special scientific interest.
Craters
It is home to species ranging from the world’s biggest flying bird, the reintroduced great bustard, to tiny shrimps that scrape a living in muddy puddles, from bats to barn owls, delicate orchids to even frailer butterflies.
Yet the regular pounding the downland gets from military manoeuvres helps foster wildlife, according to the Defence Infrastructure Organisation senior ecologist Ollie Howells.
He said: “Disturbance by tanks and other vehicles can create niches for species. Disturbance is in fact essential.
“Bomb craters, for instance, create micro-habitats which let in plants such as the devil’s-bit scabious which is the food plant for the caterpillar of the marsh fritillary, one of our rarest butterflies.
“In the main impact area for live firing we have one of the biggest marsh fritillary populations in Europe.
“The shells and mortars and tank tracks also create openings for other plants such as the kidney vetch and horseshoe vetch which are eaten by the caterpillars of small blue and adonis blue butterflies.”
Another beneficiary of armoured manoeuvres are dainty fairy shrimps which thrive in puddles in the indentations left by tank tracks.
They love short-lived puddles and ponds where they mate and lay their eggs which can lie dormant for years when the mud dries up.
In the past these eggs got dispersed on cartwheels but now tanks do a good job of spreading them around the plain. When the rain falls and tracks become puddles they rapidly develop into adults and the sequence begins again.
As we drove round, with red flags warning of live firing, we passed 5,000-year-old Sidbury Iron Age hill fort with its Bronze Age ditches, a Saxon cemetery and a spider’s web of old training trenches for soldiers preparing for the Western Front and D-Day.
On a tree in a wood where a barn owl nestbox overlooked a vole-rich field, senior archaeologist Richard Osgood showed us some First World War graffiti – carved in the bark by an Australian soldier.
To safeguard the plain the commander for the Defence Training Estate South West, Lieutenant Colonel Tim Jalland, works with the infrastructure organisation to rotate where manoeuvres take place.
Col Jalland said: “Without the military Salisbury Plain would not exist as it does now. It is a jewel for the nation.” GAVIN WILLIAMSON garden back home in South Staffordshire.
As one of the UK’s largest landowners, it is the MoD’s duty not just to defend our shores but to protect our treasured habitats. Salisbury Plain is a case in point. Over the past century we’ve made sure it remains not just a military training area but home to the most extensive area of natural chalk grassland in north-west Europe.
By combining military training with a deep sense of responsibility towards surrounding wildlife we’ve improved vast areas of flower-rich grasslands.
By letting tank tracks and shell holes turn into bare ground and temporary pools we’ve allowed rare animals like the fairy shrimp and plants like red hemp-nettle to flourish. By protecting the single biggest block of natural habitat in lowland Britain we’ve allowed butterflies such as the adonis blue to thrive.
We’ve also made sure Salisbury Plain remains a haven for birds. As patron of the World Owl Trust, I am a huge admirer of the MoD Conservation Group whose nest boxes have saved the barn owl population. I’m proud that such environmental best practice is par for the course.