Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Upland keeper
If you want to retain populations of wild birds in the uplands, it’s a good idea to start looking back at historical management practices
Regular readers of Shooting Times will be aware that I have been known to throw the odd brickbat at some Government agencies. But only when I thought they deserved it. So, when they deserve some praise, I feel it’s only right that they should have some.
The majority of Raby Estates in Upper Teesdale is designated as of Site of Special Scientific Interest status, some for both flora and fauna, but some just fauna. That fauna happens to be breeding waders. However, because of Natural England and Defra dictating stocking levels — along with a drive to stop any poaching by cattle — quite a bit of land which used to hold high levels of lapwing, snipe and redshank had become so overgrown with soft rush that it was completely useless for the birds, which like quite bare ground with a little bit of cover on which to nest.
If it’s plodged a bit by cattle into the bargain, so much the better, as the wet areas, manured by the dung, are ideal for invertebrates on which both adults and youngsters can feed. Indeed, so rank had the rush become, we had numerous pairs of reed buntings breeding instead and, according to the good ears of a keen birder friend of mine, at least one pair of sedge warblers. I have to confess, until I was close enough, my rather abused ears could not hear it.
After a decade of what I would term ‘under grazing’ — when I had pretty much given up hope of any sense ever coming forth from the aforementioned organisations in management terms — lo and behold, cattle were reintroduced. Galloways had been the backbone of management in the higher dales for a long time but were replaced bit by bit with the more supermarketdemanded continental breeds, which did not cut the mustard on a number of fronts when it came to living at higher climes and doing the job of rush-busting.
I had a farm to manage for a number of years when I worked for Raby, and one of the things we did was to reintroduce Galloway cattle back into the dale. They were in their element and did just what was required both from a bird and plant point of view. Some 30 years on, there are now far more of them on the ground in many of the dales. They have done a brilliant job. The land in question is now an excellent patchwork of bare ground with odd tufty areas. I look forward to seeing and hearing the whole suite of waders swooping and calling over the fields as they display to their mates in a few weeks’ time.
Quite why there has been such a change in Defra thinking, I’m not sure. Managing land is not rocket science, but it does give me hope that once it has seen what active management can achieve, it will be far more open to trying to turn the management clock back elsewhere.
Not everything was, or is, broken in the countryside. If you want to retain our bird populations in the uplands, there is good reason to wind things back a little and look at what management was in place when the statutory notifications were put in place. After all, it was in the main that management which made the land and what inhabited it so important. So why change it? That does not just go for breeds of cattle, it goes for the management of heather and, just as important, the management of predators.
Let’s hope that, as more unbiased science comes to light demonstrating that properly managed heather burning is not the evil it has been portrayed as, sense will prevail. As each new piece of work comes to the fore, that fact is becoming more difficult to deny, and, bear in mind, those producing it have no axe to grind, unlike some who have gone before.
“Not everything was, or is, broken in the countryside”