Most of our wildlife isn’t truly wild, the populations of our wild flowers, insects, birds and others have adapted over the last four thousand years to live in the countryside managed by humans.
There is hardly any truly wild space in Britain, even Dartmoor is a managed space that has been farmed for at least 4,500 years.
If you are managing a site for wildlife rather than food production the first question you have to answer is ‘what wildlife am I managing’? Wildlife is not a single thing and different species and groups need different things, that is why a mosaic of habitats is so important.
Volunteers from the SVA work to manage their three areas of The Byes: Margaret’s Meadow, Gilchrist Field and Livonia Field for recreation but also for nature. These areas include two of the most important habitats for nature in our valley, the river and old style grassland. Many of our birds, butterflies, other insects and small mammals need grassland managed as pasture or hay meadow, but managed in the traditional way to which they have adapted.
The SVA tries its best to maintain the majority of their area with a traditional hay regime, cutting just once a year and removing the hay. Pathways are cut more often and footfall keeps these under control. Overall the management is very successful. The Biodiversity Group has recorded over 100 species of plant growing in the three sites including many meadow flowers such as the beautiful tufted vetch and cut-leaved crane’s-bill. Recording animals is more difficult but we have seen plenty of invertebrates including eight different butterflies. The meadow areas are thriving from a nature perspective. There are other habitats, including perimeter areas of bramble.
It might be tempting to experiment with letting nature take over to see what happens but, just abandoning a space will allow some species to thrive but you are likely to lose many more species that depend on a human presence. Bramble is one such species. If left unchecked, bramble will soon take over the whole site, cancelling out any amenity value and also obliterating the grassland species.
Unimproved grassland is one of the most threatened habitats we have, and that threat extends to many of the species that depend on it. Not only are we losing wild flower populations, but all the creatures that depend on them. From bees and grasshoppers to slow worms and birds, British grassland wildlife is in sharp decline.
The traditionally managed grassland in The Byes is important and needs protecting from the encroaching bramble. Bramble thickets have their own residents, but a far more restricted variety than the grassland, and there is no shortage of bramble across the countryside, in fact it is on the increase because its spread is one of the natural outcomes of neglect. There is plenty of bramble left around the perimeter of the Byes’ meadows. That is why I was so disappointed to see the Sidmouth Herald promoting a letter this week that described the bramble clearance as environmental vandalism. It isn’t, true environmental vandalism and irresponsibility would be to allow the brambles to swamp the species rich grassland.
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