Guardian of our ‘Serengeti’
PLAN FOR HUNDREDS OF HOMES
DAVE Steel is a force of nature. And he is a force for good. His dad was a boxer, and at six foot six he is not the kind of bloke you expect to be stooping gently in a hedgerow overjoyed to see a greenveined white butterfly.
On the horizon rises the outline of what he calls ‘Manchattan.’ His non-stop friendly chatter is infectious as he implores you to embrace the beauty and wonder of ‘Greater Manchester’s Serengeti.’ He says with a rye smile ‘there are no lions’ but what there is can be lifeenhancing.
On a clear bright morning we are on Chat Moss, a vast, flat patchwork of reclaimed peat bog, woods, coppices, diverse fields of barley, coriander and cricket pitch perfect turf, peeled back in parts ready for sale. And, crucially, borders of fields left wild.
It is green-belt in Salford, but the demands of a housing crisis mean part of this land is earmarked for 800 homes.
Dave’s knowledge and, at times, emotional guardianship of the Chat may prove pivotal in whether planning permission is ever granted.
Virtually every day, the 71-year-old treks this haven which is nine miles from both Manchester and Warrington, and sliced in two by the M62.
With binoculars, note book and a finely tuned ear he records the birds, insects, common lizards and flora. The recording is forensic – the location of the habitat pinned down to individual fields which he has numbered in hand-written grid.
The land is split by a motorway, yet, ironically is a service station for 150 species of birds, refuelling, resting and breeding. The A580, East Lancashire Road also crosses the bog.
The findings of his regular spotchecks are passed on to the Greater Manchester Ecology Unit and Wildlife Trust. Their contents could be crucial when planners decided if green-belt warrants being torn up for homes.
We begin our walk at the gloriously remote Little Woolden Nature Reserve. By the 1990s it was a barren wedge of land plundered for peat. It is reached via the badly pot-holed Astley Road from Irlam, and then a potentially tyre- shredding track.
Acquired by The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside in 2013, the 247-acre site was bought for £1m from landowners,
Peel, with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It is now slowly returning to its natural state – with a helping hand from volunteers.
Sphagnum moss and cottongrass is recolonising the reserve, proving it is a true peatland. When the land was exploited for peat, drains were installed to sap the landscape of moisture and dry out the ground. They have now been blocked and as part of the restoration work water retaining structures known as bunds have been created – rewetting the landscape to allow specialist peatland wildlife and plant life to thrive once more. Rewetting also helps to preserve the thousands of tonnes of carbon stored in the peaty soil.
Dave says: “We are trying to refit this jigsaw of nature back. When I heard the Trust had bought the land I wanted to come out here and open a bottle of champagne.”
We stop and as he shows me a bog oak which is seven-and-a-half thousand years old. It is blackened as it was in a pile that was torched by vandals, but retains its natural beauty.
Speaking of the waves of white cotton grass which cover the site in the summer, Dave says: “It stops you in your tracks. I get emotional about the beauty of the place. Because they have done that you get meadow pipits, and you get insects, dragonflies. The dragonflies love these shallow pools. Because you have the dragonflies you get a summer visitor – the hobby – a beautiful bird of prey. It comes in April and feeds on them. It is neat version of a kestrel, and will be flying along then suddenly rocket to catch a dragonfly.”
Lapwing, redshank and curlew are evident too. In the middle of the soggy reserve an oyster catcher plays out a swooping dogfight with a crow which has spotted its nest.
Dave says: “My list of wading birds I have seen has increased from eight to 24. One morning I saw a couple of avocets here, another day a sandpiper, and dunlin, which you normally see on the coast, they come here and feed. I reckon all those thousands of years ago this was part of their migration route, and now they think, that looks interesting down there, let’s go and check it out.
“Last year there was a spotted redshank, black plumage, spotted with white, a lovely bird.”
Dave’s oasis has been discovered by many for the first time in the last two years.
He says: “A lot of people in Irlam and
Cadishead didn’t know they had it. Or those that did know had not been on it for years, because they have busy lives. But in lockdown everyone discovered they had this time and masses of people walked on the Moss.”
When we met, Dave had been on the Moss 22 times during April and had recorded 792 sightings of birds. They included a little ringed plover – a schedule one bird which has extra protection during the breeding season – which was stopping to refuel on wind-blown insects in the hedgerows.
He says: “Here are some lungs, the Serengeti of Greater Manchester, it should be valued, it should be treasured. You put records in to tell people what’s there, people are interested then. We had a wonderful guy who did the same at Pennington Flash in Leigh, which is now a nature reserve – and that was from an old industrial site. Our now memory is the lockdown – where did people go – they came here. They are not here now – because they have to work twice as hard to pay the bills. But they know in the back of their minds they have got this.
“They want to build on parts of the Moss. I am not happy about that. I have said do you not want to see it in a different way. The lockdown was not just an awakening – it was always in us to appreciate nature. It took something as shocking as Covid to make realise what we have got, and what can we value.”
Chat Moss is 10.6 square miles, is the largest area of prime agricultural land in Greater Manchester, and made up of Astley, Bedford, Barton, Worsley, Irlam and Cadishead Moss, Great Woolden Moss, and Little Woolden Nature
Reserve. According to the Wildlife Trust Chat Moss is in trouble. “Today, just two per cent of the lowland raised bogs across Lancashire, Greater Manchester and North Merseyside remain in some sort of salvageable condition. We are working desperately to protect these hugely valuable fragments and restore them to living, breathing mosslands once more.”
Ravaged by the peat industry, Chat Moss is now showing signs of spectacular recovery. Dave has recorded 155 species of bird, with rarities including the red-footed falcon, stone curlew, desert wheatear and great grey shrike.
Yet, under a masterplan for the region to tackle a housing shortage, a total of 800 homes are planned for the land north of Irlam station on the Moss.
Bravely one Labour councillor Lewis Nelson, who represents Cadishead and Lower Irlam broke ranks and spoke out after a councillors were told it meant the number of planned houses on the land had been cut by half.
He said his view was unchanged and added: “I have now been fighting to protect Chat Moss for the last nine years of my life. I will carry on fighting for the Moss, I expect, for many more years to come. I encourage every local resident to write into the consultation and make sure your voice is heard, by no means at all is this over. The community can count on my opposition to these plans at every stage.”
They can also count on the passion of Dave Steel. Writing in ‘Local,’ a magazine for Irlam, Cadishead, and nearby villages, he accepts: “There will come a time when I hang up my walking stick and leave my ditch hopping to others with more flexible knees, but a present the dips into the soggy reaches of our greenbelt will continue. For out there, a leap or two into the unknown can often lift me up in the company of stonechat, reed bunting, and other delightful wildlife.”
CONSERVATIONIST WHOSE KNOWLEDGE OF PEATLAND COULD HAVE KEY INFLUENCE ON