Partnership Officer, Wild Ennerdale

Wild Ennerdale is one of the UK’s largest and perhaps best known wildland partnerships. They have witnessed many changes as nature is given more freedom within the landscape, including a 65% increase in breeding territories for birds.

For us it’s simply about a more sensitive approach to land management, working more in tune with nature and restoring ecosystems. We have 4700 hectares (43 sq km) and that scale is important, as it enables natural processes to take place and be observed.

We consider ourselves to be at quite an early stage, even though we’re one of the longest running wilding projects (since 2003). It’s a long-term vision and things take time to evolve, but we’ve started to move from a fragmented land management system to a more holistic one. The first third of the valley from the west is more of a typical Lake District scene, with a patchwork of agricultural fields, hedgerows, walls and woodland. Then there’s an area of ancient oak woodland on the south side of the lake and conifer plantation on the north. As you progress up the valley you start getting a mix of conifer, broadleaf and grazing fields.

Where we’ve changed grazing regimes and introduced Galloway cattle we’ve started to see grazing fields and what was forest become more integrated, thus blurring landscape boundaries.

That is really important for wildlife and landscape resilience. We’re also starting to see more diversity within the woodland, and with that hopefully more wildlife habitat and resilience to tree disease. Some sites will be left alone and we’ll observe what happens there through natural regeneration, in other areas we are planting native broadleaf trees. There’s such a large seed source that spruce will always be a part of the landscape, but we’re not coming at this from an ecologically purist approach.

Generally, what we’re missing within the Lake District is a bigger animal that can create more disturbance. Sheep are too light, but the cattle are opening up areas that were heavily brackened before and letting more light in and distributing seeds through grazing and dunging. We’re starting to see tree growth where we hadn’t before. We’ve learned that as you reduce sheep grazing on the higher fells, woodland can move to quite high altitudes. It’s amazing to see birch, holly, heathers and rowan starting to march upslope.

From the outset we’ve said it’s about nature, people and respecting that this landscape’s been influenced by mankind for thousands of years. We want people to come and enjoy it, to benefit from it. There’s so much more understanding now about mental health and wellbeing that we can get from a connection with nature. All that is just as important as how many insects we’ve got or what bird species are doing well.