In our last meeting in February, about 50 people listened to Peter Thompson, formerly from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust, elaborate on the future of British farming.
 
Peter started by giving us a warning about his intention to be provocative! Peter remarked on the fact that there have been 11 Defra ministers in the last 15 years, each trying to make changes in policy. He contrasted it with his own long experience in farming  -Peter trained as an agronomist and during his time at the GWCT, he was instrumental in the invention of the farmer clusters that now are spread about the country, aiming to do positive things for nature conservation. Peter proposed we should have a long term plan for the countryside beyond party politics.
 
Peter then went to speak on a range of broad topics such as agriculture, climate change and people involvement. He touched on issues within agriculture, such as food security, overseas trade and food costs, and intensive agriculture. He remarked that water is going to be massive problem in association with climate change, either we have too much or too little, and then went on to speak about soil erosion and worms. An interesting anecdote he mentioned was that Darwin recognised the earthworm as the most important being on earth. He remarked on the importance of stock for land management and the paradox of vegan diets, which are not necessarily better for the environment in comparison to non-intensive stock husbandry..
 
Rewilding was necessarily part of the reflection and Peter explained that rewilding shouldn’t be applied everywhere but targeted to specific areas - giving the example of heather moorland, an important habitat maintained thanks to human intervention and which would be lost if it stopped. He remarked on the importance of rewilding river margins and creating wildlife corridors. Another topic he touched upon was tree planting and afforestation - but not the only solution to carbon capture! Peter also touched on housing, which of course adds pressure but it can bring opportunities, for example for solar farms on their roofs rather than on farmland.
 
Peter ended by speaking about the importance of community involvement, educating future generations and even adults - 85% of the people in the UK live in an urban environment. Finally, he reminded us to stay positive and the importance of submitting our wildlife observations as records to the Biological Record Centre, which compiles all of them to provide baseline data for nature conservation, planning, etc.

Peter Shallcross

Dr Jocelyn Elson-Riggins is a locally-based Whale Poo Ambassador for the Rugvin Foundation and a self-employed research consultant specializing in the fields of marine biology, veterinary parasitology, and wildlife disease.

Jocelyn joins us on Thurs 13th March for her talk "Pooping for the planet: why whales are marine ecosystem engineers" in the Victoria Hall, High Street, Tisbury at 7:30pm. The doors to the Victoria Hall will be open from 7pm and the bar will be available then too. Members are free and guests £2 at the door.

Jocelyn obtained a BSc from Bangor University, an MS from California State University Long Beach and a PhD from the University of California, Riverside. She then spent four years lecturing at Montana State University Billings before undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC), UK. Prior to becoming self-employed, Jocelyn was the Supervising Scientist of the RVC’s Clinical Investigation Centre laboratories. Most recently, she has been lecturing part-time at Bournemouth University.

In this session, Jocelyn will give an illustrated and entertaining talk on the roles whales play in marine ecosystems and in the mitigation of climate change. This will include findings from the latest scientific research. These discoveries have shattered previous assumptions about the importance of whales. Finally, she will talk about the threats whales face in today’s world and will open the floor to group discussion.

The Rugvin Foundation’s “Whale Poo Game” will be on display at the talk and if any Young Nature Watch members want to come have a look at it before the talk, they are most welcome. This game was developed as part of a workshop for school-age children. These uplifting and educational workshops are designed to raise awareness of how sustainable living and protection of whales can contribute to healthy ecosystems and the fight against climate change.

We would like to encourage those of you with children or grandchildren to visit the Dorchester Family Science Festival on Sun March 16th where Jocelyn will be running the game in conjunction with Prof. Genoveva Estaban and Dr Demetra Andreou of BU. The children will play the whale poo game first. They will then move on to Genoveva's table where they will see phytoplankton for themselves under the microscope. Then, they will learn about environmental DNA with Demetra. They will "process" water samples to generate a DNA barcode, which they will use to match to a specific marine organism (one of the ones they learned about in the whale poo game).

UPDATED TIMES

Our AGM will take place at 7.00pm on Thursday 13th February at the Victoria Hall, Tisbury and will be followed by a talk at 7.30pm entitled The Future of the British Landscape by Peter G Thompson, formerly of Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. 

Doors and the bar will open from 6:30pm.

Peter worked for the trust for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2018. In his position as farmland biodiversity officer, he is described as a huge inspiration for many of the Trust’s current farmland conservationists.

Before joining GWCT Peter worked as an agronomist and crop consultant for commercial companies. At the same time, our farmland research group, building on Hugh Oliver-Bellasis’ work, had developed many management techniques to help support grey partridges, especially developing insect-rich brood cover and nesting cover.
These ideas needed to be promoted to farmers by someone who understood arable farming – especially pesticide use - who was BASIS trained and could speak with confidence to farmers. Peter was perfect for the role.

Known for his ability to translate science and communicate the message effectively, Peter toured the country giving advice about arable crop management and partridges. People always understood him and were enthused by his passion for wildlife. He inspired people to do better and achieve more on their farms.

Peter was at the forefront of the development of Farmer Clusters and his ideas, drive and advocacy for a bottom up, farmer-led approach to conservation have helped influence current and future agri-environment policy. A farm walk led by Peter was always a jolly affair, but packed full of knowledge and useful advice.
​
Peter is also a keen birder and has taught himself the identification of UK moths.

Emma Procter

We recently had a talk by Robin Leech on monitoring rivers (particularly, the Wylye). Robin is an ecologist employed by the Wylye farmer cluster and he spoke about some of the work he does with his farmers, involving monitoring river pollution (chemical and sedimentary) and also re-naturalisation. A lot of what he spoke about theoretically applies to our river, the Nadder.

Many of us who are interested in river pollution (to stop it!) have all probably heard by now a lot on eutrophication, nitrates and phosphates, and there was some debate at the talk on the representativity of these indicators of the extent of the chemical pollution in rivers and also on the randomness of establishing a “safe” level of pollution.

But Robin also spoke about something a bit novel: colourimetric analysis to find out where the sediments in the river come from, to target sediment run-off at source. Colourimetric analysis involves taking samples of sediment from the river, putting them in an oven to burn the organic matter and dry the grains and then put the dry remaining sample in a machine that analyses the colour - this allows to compare it with a reference collection of sediment samples from the surrounding areas of a river. 

He also spoke about their new project to restore the natural floodplains in some of the Wylye and the renaturalisation of the river system, which is something that will hopefully occupy many conservation organisations in the future. The straightened courses of rivers, with high banks, not only is detrimental to wildlife (for example, water voles) but also, in heavy rain, sends high quantities of water downstream, producing flooding in towns, and also sediments due to the erosion of the banks. Restoring the natural course of rivers not only will promote wildlife and natural processes and reduce sedimentary pollution, but it will also have the added benefit of reducing flooding in sensitive areas (the flooding needs to happen whether we want it or not, but if the river is allowed to flood a floodplain, then it won’t flood a town further down!).

​Inés López-Dóriga

​The Society meeting this November will be one of the rare occasions when I actually know something of the topic we shall hear about. A little over a year ago I paid a visit to a stretch of riverbank in the Wylye Valley to hear all about work being done by local farmers. They were  running a programme of soil sampling and trials, with the aim of reducing levels of nitrate, phosphate and sediment run-off reaching the river and groundwater. 
 
The man I heard speak a year ago, Robin Leech, is coming to talk to us on the topic of Wylye Valley Farmer Cluster: monitoring rivers, at 7:30pm on Thursday 14th November (in the Victoria Hall on Tisbury High Street).
 
​Robin is a passionate naturalist, skilled in bird and invertebrate identification, who is making ecology into a career. He is employed by a local farmer and landowner and acts as co-ordinator for the group of farmers involved in this project work.

We shall hear how the project is going, one year on from my visit. And we shall also hear, I am sure, about the Landscape Recovery Project initiated this year for the wider Wylye Valley, involving both the Wessex Rivers Trust and Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, that aims to restore the river to a more natural state and reconnect it to the floodplain.

All of which should have huge benefits for biodiversity, alongside improving water quality and sequestering carbon.

Dick Budden

Come along to the film this Thursday 7th November for the viewing at 6pm of "Six inches of soil". Doors and bar open at 5:30. Free for members or £2 for guests.​

This is a story of courage, vision and hope; an inspiring story of three young farmers on the first year of their journey to heal the soil and help transform the food system. Working with communities, small businesses, chefs and entrepreneurs, they, and others like them, are leading the way to transform how our food is produced and consumed. 

As the trio strive to adopt regenerative practices and create viable businesses, they meet seasoned mentors who help them on their journey. They are joined by other experts providing wisdom and solutions from a growing movement of people dedicated to changing the trajectory for food, farming and the planet.

Mainstream “industrial” farming practices significantly contribute to soil degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Regenerative farming practices promote healthier soils, provide healthier, affordable food, restore biodiversity and sequester carbon.

Regenerative farming techniques work in harmony with, rather than against nature. They keep carbon in the ground and create resilient systems in the face of climate uncertainty. Together with a focus on local food systems, shorter supply chains, the advantages are numerous. We get to know who is growing our food and how, farmers get paid a fair price and have the satisfaction of producing healthy food in a healthy environment. 

​Dick Budden

At this time of year hedges are looking at their best, as far as fruit is concerned. The winter storms and hedge cutting haven’t bashed it away, and the birds and animals haven’t started in earnest.

Following this summer’s wetter than normal weather, there is a good crop of rosehips, crab apples, and berries on blackthorn, spindle, hawthorn, wayfaring tree, guelder rose, rowan, elder and buckthorn. This (incomplete) list shows how important it is to plant a whole range of species when planting a hedge. Ancient hedges can have many more species than more recently planted ones, where the predominant species is often hawthorn, as it is cheap to buy and stock proof.

Last winter, no hedges, except those by the roadside, were cut on Wallmead Farm, because it was too wet to get any tractors into the fields without creating mud and ruts for months and the damage would be too much to remedy easily. 

Over the years, I have learnt that cutting should be as late as possible, and certainly not before Christmas, to let the birds and animals have time to eat their fill. Conservation subsidies help with the cost of hedge cutting if it is only done every second or third year, so that is what I have done too. The reason for this is that the flowering and therefore the fruit only happens on growth that is older than a year old. Yearly cutting results in no fruit at all.

When a tall and wide hedge is cut back, the result can look awful! With a flail (which all hedge cutters are) large stems are torn with a jagged edge and the hedge looks as if it has been mauled, a sight which I am sure is familiar to you all. The hedge does recover when spring comes and new shoots appear.

Before hedge cutters (going back 50 years or more), most hedges would have been laid on a rotation of about 15 years; hedges were radically thinned, and the remaining stems were cut at the base halfway through and bent to about 45 degrees to form an impenetrable barrier. 

This essentially is the advice to follow from The People’s Trust for Endangered Species, who have done research on this subject: to cut each two or three years gently, so it increases in height and width slowly, and then to lay it once every 15-20 years. There is a subsidy to help pay for this very slow and expensive job. 

​Peter Shallcross

Andrew Graham will lead us on a walk around Arne RSPB Reserve where we will pass through varied habitats of heathlands, woods and wetlands with views over Poole Harbour. Arne is a terrific place for wildlife and BBC Seasonwatch has been broadcast from here a number of times, it is so good. It would therefore be a shame not to see a good part of its varied habitats. So, weather permitting, we will aim to spend the day here and we will be walking 4-5 miles. 

Please let us know if you are planning to join the trip and where you will meet us. No dogs. 
 
Meet at the Nadder Centre car park at 9:30am or at the Arne car park at 11:00 am    (OS Grid reference SY972 878) or What3Words wings.poetic.crown. The car park (charges for non- RSPB members) is located on the right at the beginning of Arne village from the Stoborough direction.
 
Distance, Difficulty and Footwear: There is relatively easy walking on paths and tracks with some slopes. Stout shoes should suffice unless wet. Bring binos, a packed lunch and refreshments.

Anticipated end time: Conclude at Arne by 3pm returning to Nadder Centre by 4pm.
 
https://www.rspb.org.uk/days-out/reserves/arne/location

Please can we have some helpers at the Community Field (below the Skate Park, Tisbury) next week for a 6pm start. You will need to bring some gardening gloves and if you have a gardening fork that makes it easier. We have found that ragwort numbers have diminished with the regular pulling over recent years, so it shouldn't take long. This is in preparation for the hay cut and removing ragwort is necessary due to its toxicity to animals.