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MAKING WILDLAND PAY: Knepp, 6th meeting REWILDING MIDDLE ENGLAND: Cropston, 5th meeting SCARY OR WHAT?: Cirencester - 4th meeting WILDLAND IN WALES: Machynlleth, 3rd meeting |
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MAKING WILDLAND PAY: A
review of markets and enterprises from wild land and rewilding
12 & 13 April 2007, Knepp Estate, E Sussex NOTES FROM THE MEETING: I first met Charlie Burrell at the second WN meeting, and liked him because of his humour and easy manner. His talk about letting go of conventional agriculture on his large Sussex estate was evidence of the new possibilities opened up by the decoupling of European subsidy from agricultural production. As with other large farmland owners, Charlie's advisers had shown him the sums that said that farming, difficult on his clay soil, was a second best option to sitting on his hands and pocketing the money. But Charlie is driven by other motivations, and what could have been an estate just ticking over to comply with subsidy requirements has become a large scale experiment in letting semi-natural processes take over. Change rarely happens overnight, other than in the human determination to commit to relinquishing absolute control over nature. What follows then is wild nature's response to the release of restraint - slowly in the case of the scrubbing-up now expected in the greater landscape of Knepp, and relatively quicker when diversion ditches are blocked to reinstate wetland meanders. The Knepp Wildland Project is phased, but the early returns of rewarding nature from extensive rangeland grazing in the restored parkland gave Charlie confidence that he could continue making the changes across the whole of his estate, and bring in more space from his relatives' land around him. Charlie seems to meet each day thinking where else can he give this complex, protean, evolving organism a little push by overturning another restraint. WN went to Knepp with the theme of finding the pay-off from rewilding, whether through characteristic products, ecological services, or nature tourism. Other than in Knepp itself, and a rollicking presentation from Frans Vera, the meeting was a failure as it was unable to reflect any small to medium scale examples where the harvest (or impact) is low in comparison to the overall wild productivity of a location. Thus no small woodland workers like the nearby Ben Law in W Sussex who owns Prickly Nut Wood (8 acres) and manages an adjacent 90 acres of coppice; an opportunity lost in not searching out the wild harvests in the Sussex Food Finder, a business guide to local food sources, markets, retailers and organisations; or in making use of Reforesting Scotlands Forest Harvest Directory whose co-ordinator was present at the meeting. The hard issue of valuing (pricing) ecological services was also ducked, even though it became obvious during the day that it was a crucial underpinning. Knepp thus became the cornerstone of the day. A comprehensive presentation by Jason Emerich, the estate's resident land agent, covered not just the new farmland dynamics of rangeland style grazing, but also the business plan of the Wildland Project and the relative income contribution between subsidy and sales of meat. It would paint a false picture to leave out the substantial investment made, and income potential arising from the change and re-use of buildings on the estate. That would be the business diversification that any rural land owner would have embarked on in the last few years. But the determination to use farming subsidy and stewardship income as succour to reshape the harvest and the nature of productivity at Knepp is what makes it different. Moreover, the open hearted nature of Charlie is such that he will give you a CD of the Feasibility Study and Business Plan of the Wildland Project, which provides a fascinating insight and a lot of supporting technical information. The single farm payment and two stewardship funds (CSS ans OELS) give Knepp an income in the £100,000s that will last another 7 years, and maybe longer depending on a continuation of the European subsidy regime. With that enviable cushion, the aim is to gradually expand meat sales from the longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs and fallow deer that free-range all year in various areas of the estate. Thus the northern fields that we explored later in the day have been enclosed by one big new fence that surounds the perimeter, and with all the other fences inside having been been dismantled. Fortunately, there is a good proportion of woodland and hedge lines encompassed inside that big fence area, and the herbivore pressure from a small herd of 40 long horn cows and followers on 300 acres is tightly calculated on Grazing Livestock Units (GLUs). The total GLU pressure includes an estimate of the effect of the local wild roe deer population that can get access to this area. The overall calculation is that the GLU will be low enough such that this land will "scrub up" rather than be grazed out as it would be in conventional farming, or in its surrogate twin of conservation grazing. It is an experiment on a grand scale, with the expectation that the landscape will become fuzzy as the hedge lines and woodland spread out into the pasture, but still retaining the "clearings" that were once the pasture fields. I have to be optimistic at this prospect, even though at only 18 months so far, just the blackthorn have suckered into the fields and a very oak seedlings have appeared. I'm more worried at the moment about the effect of cattle hooves on the ancient woodland ground flora, but since it is extensive and will be monitored, there should be a period of calm while the walking routes and behaviour of these now fully independent animals are allowed to develop. All this could just be seen in the context of another flavour of a safari-like park, and indeed Charlie has encouraged greater foot access and a visitor centre is proposed in the business plan. He has got hold of a long trailer, similar to those used on nature reserves in Holland, which has a central, two-sided bench seat that takes 40 people, and is towed around by a tractor. But Knepp is not a zoo because there are projections for income from culling the rangeland animals on a scale that mimics natural predation - the latter being the self-regulatory system in nature for controlling the level of herbivore pressure. He's not culling the Exmoor ponies since it is only the French and Spanish who eat cute animals, but even the ponies will have their population controlled by sales of live animals. At this stage, the income from meat is pretty low, but it will rise as the animal populations move into a more mature dynamic. Frans Vera has been an adviser to Charlie Burrell on the Knepp Wildland Project, and I have been able to see him in a different light based on this and his presentation at the meeting. His book on herbivore pressure shaping landscapes unleashed a triumphal satisfaction in those addicted to conservation grazing, in spite of the range of eminent authors who contend that it in no way substantiates a landscape denuded of scrub or significant woodland. His book now is less interesting to me than his involvement in achieving in Holland through the Dutch Forestry Service what he calls "nature development". The high profile example is the reclaiming of derelict land for "wildish" nature at OVP, where the introduction of Konik horses to the regenerating semi-wetland landscape gave the Dutch a pleasurable allusion to zebra amongst a returning population of wetland birds and mammals. The recipe continued with the coastal defence realignment work near Millingen where farmland was bought up and re-flooded, and in the change of emphasis that has been brought to their woodland national parks through putting in charismatic species (not necessarily native wild ones - highland cattle for example). His talk was entitled "fascination" because the Dutch approach is to introduce human fascination and "wild play" into "nature park" areas through re-introduction of fun species into improving habitats. Forget the very suspect forest ecology of his book, the key success of this "nature development" is to bring the fascination, recreation and fun back into nature - wild, native or not. It's a connection. The workshops and discussion afterwards went throught the grind of caveat after caveat, even to the extent that a supplementary workshop added on the day set out to replace the term "wildland" as it can induce fear of change in farmers and landowners, and brings with it the perception of untidiness and also intrusion from public access. I weary of this even as I accept that it is a necessary task to give space each meeting to the same old tired arguments of people who haven't even started on the journey of going "beyond conservation". But I took heart from Emma Chapman of Reforesting Scotland who used the example of the debasement of the word sustainability as a caution against being too circumspect about using wildland. Emma also warned us to be careful of dealing in condescension when we use one term for farmers and landowners and another amongst ourselves. Mark Fisher 7 May 2007 www.self-willed-land.org.uk mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk |
