CLM20-2 full issue-1 - Flipbook - Page 14
Measuring conservation success on farmland
Left Skylarks and other ground-nesting species have benefitted from a change to spring-sown crops
on the ‘98 Land and Westfield; the dominance of winter-sown crops has contributed to farmland bird
declines across Britain. Right The plots are in the top 1% of sites surveyed nationally for counts of grey
partridge. Geoff Harries
scheme funding, internal funding and volunteer
effort to restore farmland habitats. One author
(TS), a tenant farmer for the CRT, modified
conventional practices and introduced techniques
to maximise the opportunities for wildlife to
thrive. It was hoped that we could demonstrate
to conventional farmers, government agencies,
and other policy-makers and advisors that
successful farming could go hand-in-hand with
thriving wildlife.
The two larger blocks of land allowed for
more accurate wildlife monitoring. The ’98
Land had been a patch of intensively farmed
Cambridgeshire clay, which at purchase was used
for winter wheat. Two ditches divide the land into
three fields, but each field was cropped as part
of a single block. These ditches feed into a brook
which forms the southern boundary of the land
and was the only semi-natural habitat on the farm
on acquisition. Westfield, a slightly smaller plot,
was a single arable unit plus two grassland fields
that border the brook mentioned above. Unlike
the ’98 Land, however, Westfield was bought with
internal funding, which gave us the opportunity
to do one thing differently: while an important
element of the grant for the ’98 Land was to
enable public access, we were able to restrict
access to the privately owned Westfield in order to
test whether reduced disturbance might improve
outcomes for wildlife.
The restoration of the ’98 Land involved
dividing the monoculture into ten smaller fields,
separated by features such as hedges or beetle
banks. Two fields adjacent to the brook were
sown with native wildflower-meadow mixes,
while the remaining eight fields are arable. Arable
fields were given 6m grass margins and managed
as a mosaic of crop types under a varied rotation;
there is no ‘block-cropping’, with each field
instead tending to carry a different crop to its
neighbour. Small areas are planted with wild bird
cover crops and, particularly in the early years
in line with EU agricultural policy, a proportion
of land was ‘set aside’ or left fallow. The basic
approach at Westfield was similar, the aim being to
re-establish the pre-war field boundaries with new
hedgerows or beetle banks, creating four smaller
arable fields with a diverse crop mosaic. The areas
of low grassland have low-input management such
as hay making or seasonal grazing.
One particularly important tenet of the cropping
regime at both sites is that approximately 40%
of the crops are spring-planted, with a substantial
area left as overwintered stubble. The dominance
12 Conservation Land Management Summer 2022 | Vol. 20 No. 2
