<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/farm-create-biggest-natural-grassland-southern-england>
"The rolling hills south of Salisbury Plain are a bleak scene of vast arable
fields and tightly grazed pasture dotted with scores of sheep.
In recent decades, Lower Pertwood farm has embraced organic growing, producing
oats, barley and other crops, while boosting numbers of rare corn buntings and
other wildlife with wildflower banks and newly planted trees.
But as wildlife continues to decline in Wiltshire and the farm’s profits
plummet amid an increasingly unpredictable climate, the owners are turning to
farming nature instead.
The 2,800-acre arable farm begins its transformation this spring into the
biggest grassland rewilding project in southern England, in an attempt to
restore declining plants, insects and endangered species including cuckoos,
grasshopper warblers and turtle doves.
The “Pertwood Plain” project, masterminded by Restore, a land management
company specialising in large-scale restoration led by the naturalist Benedict
Macdonald, will ultimately see low densities of pigs and cattle roaming free to
recreate flower-rich chalk grassland. This naturalistic grazing, alongside
interventions such as adding green hay and brash piles where birds perch and
excrete seeds into the soil, will give rise to a mosaic of grass and scrubland
teeming with invertebrate life.
In the future, visitors could enjoy the return of extinct species including the
great bustard, which has been reintroduced on to nearby Salisbury Plain, and
the charismatic red-backed shrike, which became effectively extinct as a
breeding bird in Britain in the 1990s."
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-marriage-equality-thailand-conservation-romania-reforestation-mediterranean/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
