Wildlife going off the rails?

Old railway lines in Norfolk can be fantastic havens for wildlife, according to project officer Mark Webster. As part of the County Wildlife Action project, the trust has been surveying a number of them for wildflowers, and we have been ‘chuffed’ to discover some real rarities at sites where steam trains used to rush past! So why not muddle along and go somewhere along the Norfolk Trails long-distance paths?

 

It can be a bit of a strange experience walking along the old railway lines that criss-cross the county. You can be feeling how tranquil the area is, far from the sound of traffic, and then suddenly realise that exactly where you are walking, and not so long ago, express trains used to rush along, perhaps passing a line of trucks filled with cattle on their way to market - or a seaside special would be taking hundreds of excited families from the midlands off on their annual holiday on the sandy beaches of Norfolk’s east coast.

Platforms and original fencing at Briggate

Honing old station as it was

One of the sites I’ve been working at is the old Honing station at Briggate, and it’s a fascinating place – an abandoned station where you can walk among the remains of the brick walls, stepping from ticket office to waiting room – and even into the ladies and gents, where you can still see the layers of paint where the Midland and Great Northern railway’s brown and cream colour scheme was covered later by the green of the Great Eastern railway company. The M&GN was somewhat affectionately known and the ‘Muddle and Go Nowhere’ railway, because of its tortuous route across country from one little village to another. This section of track didn’t even last until Dr Beeching swung his axe – it shut in 1959, but still the original wooden criss-cross fencing survives, along with the huge platforms, and remains of the signal box and cattle pens, now with brambles and nettles growing where once was a busy workplace.

And there is a lot of wildlife along this route too – recent surveys have recorded several species of bats feeding here, and there are surveys for fungi coming up on 18 October, and mosses on 8 November, both of which are open to the public to join, with absolute beginners welcome to come and learn about these often forgotten organisms. 

Small-flowered catchfly in Felmingham

Nearby at Knapton and Felmingham, there are substantial railway cuttings, amazingly dug by hand. And the work of the navvies is not wasted now, as the cuttings’ south-facing slopes have become hotspots for wildflowers and the butterflies that feed on them.  I was especially delighted to come across lots of the endangered small-flowered catchfly (Silene gallica) here last summer: it’s a delightful little red and white flower which depends on the open sandy soil here.

Most of the old railway lines around North Walsham are owned and managed by Norfolk County Council, and there is more information about these and other walking routes here. Or if you would rather not explore these places alone, why not join one of the free activities run by our partners TCV (The Conservation Volunteers) which include some free short wildlife ID courses in October and November. The Mushroom Foray is led by county fungi recorder – and real enthusiast for his subject - Tony Leech. Find out more about these curious organisms.

 

Indoor events will include renowned wildlife cameraman Jerry Kinsley showing some of his stunning nature photos – and sharing the secrets of his success, which includes the somewhat surprising use of a skateboard – at Honing Village Hall on Tuesday 17 October at 7.30pm, and a talk by local railway author Nigel Digby on the M&GN at North Walsham Community Centre exactly a week later.  

For more details about how to join any of these walks and talks, please contact me via markw@norfolkwildlifetust.org.uk  or 07843 069 567, or see the What’s On pages of the NWT website

Conservation: challenge and opportunity

Norfolk Wildlife Trust's Head of People and Wildlife, David North gives a personal view of what the challenges ahead might be for our wildlife and natural environment post Brexit and how we can take action.

Few people would disagree that today is a time of great changes. For both agriculture and nature conservation the future is less certain today than for a generation. Though no one knows for sure what the impact of Brexit will be on agriculture and nature conservation undoubtedly, there will be new challenges and opportunities.

Many of us will have come across the term SWOT analysis which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Now perhaps is a good time to apply this tool to wildlife conservation. Though what follows is purely my personal take on some of the challenges and opportunities facing wildlife conservation -  if this in any way stimulates further thinking about how we can best protect wildlife in changing times then it will have served a useful purpose.

Some of the 1,400 NWT volunteers Elizabeth Dack

Strengths:  The biggest strength we have as a movement is surely a groundswell of public support.  It’s said that more than 7 million people in the UK belong to conservation organisations and both the RSPB and the Wildlife Trusts have more members than any political party in the UK. 

Weaknesses:  The continuing loss of habitats and wildlife so clearly demonstrated in many studies, including the recent State of Nature reports, shows clearly that despite many conservation success stories in protecting special sites as nature reserves, and some notable species success stories, such as otters and red kites, that the loss of wildlife in the wider countryside has continued in every decade since the 1940s. Our biggest weakness has been our lack of success in protecting formerly widespread and common species in the wider countryside.

Photo: David Tipling

Opportunities:  In recent times each year £3 billion pounds of funding has gone to support agriculture in the UK through the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy.  Some of these funded schemes, such as Higher Level Stewardship (HLS), have brought about environmental and wildlife benefits and also provided vital financial support to conservation bodies including Norfolk Wildlife Trust, RSPB and National Trust. However, they have largely failed to prevent continuing degradation of our countryside for wildlife. As we take back national control of agricultural support payments there is a huge opportunity to see some of these funds targeted more effectively at helping farmers and conservation organisations to restore wildlife habitats on a landscape scale.  Given that more than 70% of our countryside is farmed if we are to stand any chance of reversing the destruction of vital wildlife habitats and the declines we see across so many formerly common species then the future structure of agricultural subsidies will be crucial. The government has promised a 25 year vision for nature and this needs to clearly identify how in new ways agricultural support funding will better enable farmers and nature conservation bodies to work together to create a more diverse, more wildlife-friendly, richer and more beautiful countryside for both people and wildlife.

Kingfisher by David North

Threats:  It seems to me that the biggest threat is the low priority given to wildlife and the countryside in political discussions about our future.  This was clear during the last election when environmental issues were barely mentioned by politicians or the media.  The threat is that a healthy and wildlife rich ecology, rather than being seen as the bedrock on which our future health and wealth depends is seen as a minority interest of a few awkward activists and naturalists.  We (and in this ‘we’ I include readers of this Blog and NWT members!) know that healthy, properly functioning ecosystems provide us with clean air, clean water, natural  pollution control, help mitigate climate change, provide free natural flood controls, keep our soils healthy, enable  pollinators to ensure our crops thrive and contribute massively to human happiness, health and wellbeing.  But do our politicians and decision makers really understand and act on this?

So if any of this rings true what can we do?  The Government is promising, for the first time in a generation, an Agriculture Bill (the last major Agriculture Bill was in 1947).  We can make sure our elected MPs know that we want to ensure that any Bill that determines how agriculture support will be provided in future absolutely ensures that the health and beauty of the countryside, and the value of restoring healthy functioning ecosystems rich in wildlife delivering the ‘ecosystem services’ such as pollination, healthy soils, and clean water is high on the priority list. The Wildlife Trusts nationally are working with other major environmental bodies to ensure that conservation organisations speak with one voice to ensure that the environmental protections currently provided through the EU Habitats Directive, EU Birds directive and other European environment laws are not lost when we leave the EU.  You can find out more at www.greeneruk.org 

NWT Foxley Wood by Richard Osbourne

However, as was shown when the plans to sell off public forests were reversed, public opinion is a powerful voice when it comes to politics.  I believe that decisions made in the next few years will be crucial to the kind of future environment our children will inherit.  We can all play a part in ensuring that new opportunities for reversing the declines in nature are taken and threats of weakened laws to protect wildlife averted. But we can only ensure this if we make sure as individuals that our voices are heard. And heard loud and clear by the people who will be taking decisions which will affect our countryside and wildlife for a generation.  If you care about the future of our countryside and wildlife please make sure your voice is heard. Wildlife doesn’t have a voice in the decisions which will determine its future. We need to be its voice.

On the verge...

Primroses and violets David North

Spring is good time to brush up on your plant identification skills as the hedge banks, lanes and roadside verges begin to blossom.  Here Norfolk Widlife Trust's Head of People and Wildlife, David North encounters some of our spring species as they emerge from winter.

Early April and nature seems pregnant with possibilities. Along the lanes close to where I live trees – oak, ash, beech and sycamore – are still winter bare, branches stark and darkly silhouetted against spring bright skies.  Birdsong and wildflowers - spring would not be spring without them, and both are in evidence as I walk my dog along familiar verges now brightened with the golds of  primrose and celandine, sky-blue speedwells and the unassuming greenish-yellow flowers of dog’s mercury. 

White dead nettle David North

 

This is the time of year I make my annual resolution to learn my wildflowers. Of course now it’s easy, the list of what’s in flower is comparatively small.  Red dead nettle is in profusion on road verges, forming magenta patches along the lanes.  Everyone knows dandelions and daisies and although both can be spotted in flower throughout the winter, their flowers are now abundant.  They do say spring hasn’t properly arrived until you can cover seven daisy flowers with a single footprint: well by my count spring is clearly here.   

More hidden are the flowers of other arable weeds, escaped from the fields onto my local road verges.  The diminutive white flowers of hairy bittercress, dull yellows of groundsel, the white stars of common chickweed and mauve-blues of ground ivy are easy enough to spot if you stop, bend and look a bit more closely among the grass.  I have some wonderful, shady sunken lanes to walk along. The banks here are festooned with literally hundreds of primroses and looking more closely amongst them I can find the black spotted leaves of early purple orchid and, already in flower, delicate white petals of barren strawberry. Woodland escapees on these shady roadside banks include the first red campion in flower, dog’s mercury, dog violet and ‘lords and ladies’ (wild arum).

'Lords and ladies' David North

The next few weeks in April will bring many more species into flower along our verges.  Look out for greater stitchwort, lacy-white cow parsley, and one of my favourites, growing on just a few local verges, the meadow saxifrage. I must dig out my wild flower guide and remind myself of how to distinguish creeping buttercup from bulbous and meadow buttercups and take on the annual challenge of speedwells: now is that one germander, field, slender, wall or ivy-leaved?

Few wildflower meadows remain in Norfolk but we probably all have a roadside verge close to where we live and these can be a haven for wildflowers.  And where there are flowers there will be butterflies and bees to spot. In the longer grass small mammals such as shrews and voles can thrive and their predators, barn owls, kestrels, foxes, weasels and stoats all hunt along grassy verges. So our roadside verges are like long, thin nature reserves and help wildlife move across the landscape

Red campion David North

Our roadside verges, if managed sensitively, can be hugely important for nature and our living landscapes. There are 238,000 hectares of road verge grassland in Britain with Norfolk alone having around 20,000 kms of road verges.  Across Britain verges support over 1,000 species of flowering plants including some species only found here.  With the loss of so many natural meadows in Norfolk today you are more likely to see a cowslip growing on a road verge than in a wild meadow. Even many orchid species, from common spotted to the early-purple and bee orchid, may be found thriving on road-sides. So why not take a walk on the verge and see what’s in flower in your local patch.  If you find something unusual don’t forget to let us know or send a photo to our gallery.    

If you, like me, would like to get to know your local wild flowers better then here are some to look out for along Norfolk’s roadside verges in April.  

• Common daisy

• Dandelion

  

  Violet David North

• Celandine

• Common vetch 

• Cow Parsley

• Garlic Mustard

• Greater Stitchwort

• Lords and Ladies (Cuckoo Pint)

• Red campion

• Red dead nettle

• Self heal

• Dog and Sweet Violet

• White dead nettle

Exploring layers of history in the Norfolk Claylands

January may not be abundant with wildflowers but there is plenty to discover on a winter's walk as Helen Baczkowska, Conservation Officer with Norfolk Wildlife Trust records in her Claylands Diary for January.
 
Although I am an enthusiast of wild flowers, January walks are strangely a joy; for once I am not distracted by the delights of stitchwort or speedwell, by trying to sort greater from lesser bird’s foot trefoil.  Instead, I can look out on landscapes, study bare trees and cold winter ponds with a different eye.

On a walk through the heart of the Claylands Living Landscape, my brother, an archaeologist, slowed us down by lightly kicking at molehills. One revealed the treasure he sought – a thin, curved blade of flint I would not have looked twice at.  The chipped edge he showed me was human made, one of the thousand upon thousand Mesolithic flint tools discarded across these lands.  Most, he explained, were found on dry sandy soils, the reasons uncertain, yet how, he asked, had they recognised these places?  For an ecologist, this one question begs many more about how the vegetation of Britain developed as the last glaciers retreated to the north and as herds of large herbivores, from prehistoric bison, to deer and ponies, spread out across the cold steppe grasslands and scrub.

Gorse by David North

   

One thing I could certainly say is that even today, the patches of sandy soils left on the edge of the ice sheets can be easily distinguished amongst the ground up chalky clay of South Norfolk; earlier walking over the County Wildlife Site at Wood Green, we had crossed an area of gorse and fine grasses, visible even in winter.  In summer, heath bedstraw and heath speedwell grow here, although most of the common is clay, with meadow vetchling, meadow buttercup, cowslip and black knapweed.

Nearby Fritton Common is a Site of Special Scientific Interest, with orchids and ponds were great crested newts breed, but in the bleakness of January, my attention was drawn to the almost straight rows of oak trees, most noticeable on the western boundary.  Some of these are huge old trees, the largest in the south-west corner showing signs of pollarding – a way that small wood was once produced by cutting and re-cutting above the height of grazing stock. Collecting small wood from pollards was often the right of the commoners, whereas the timber trees themselves were the property of the lord of the manor. 

Old oak tree by Brian Beckett

In the centuries when barns and houses and especially warships were built on oak frames, these trees were valuable, their management and planting central to a farm’s income and survival; it is likely that the amount of oak across many English counties is not a virtue of ecology, so much a legacy of old economies and the insatiable need for timber for ships.  Today, being winter bare, these trees make curious shapes, with a large, gnarled trunks and many holes; invertebrates inhabit the crevices and barbestelle bats, which are have been recorded hunting over the common, no doubt find a roost in the cracks and fissured bark.

The lines of pollards continue south of Fritton Common, along a sinuous path, known locally as Snake Lane.  Hedges in the Claylands are often tall, with mature trees and a flora suggesting these are old fragments of woodland. The wide hedges of Snake Lane indicate long generations of woodland management, with pollards of oak and field maple; between them the pale slender trunks of hazel show signs of past coppicing.  Like pollarding, this produced small wood for hurdles and tool handles by cutting and re-cutting, but this time at ground level; the re-grown trees have many stems and a distinctive stump or “stool”.  A few hornbeam grow here too, their bark smooth and twisted into long creases, their timber once famed for its hardness.

Returning home, across Morningthorpe Common, a whisper makes me look up.  With a sound like the lightest of summer breezes in tall trees, a flock of fieldfares is heading to roost.  I have spotted a lot of these large, grey-backed thrushes over the past week, no doubt forced briefly south by cold weather. 

Fieldfare by Elizabeth Dack

 
By the end of our walk, dusk is wintry, grey and damp; warmth and hot tea beckon, but so do more days of walking the quiet, hidden tracks of the Claylands, exploring the endless, inseparable layering of human and natural history.

Your voice matters

Why now is a good time to take positive action for the future of Norfolk's wildlife by David North, Head of People and Wildlife.  

Swallowtail by Tim Melling

If you are reading this then the chances are that you, like me, care about Norfolk’s wildlife.  Fortunately huge numbers of people in our county do value nature and now is an important time to make our voices heard.
 
Norfolk Wildlife Trust is making its voice heard by writing to our MPs asking them to sign a ‘Pledge for the Environment’.  The Wildlife Trusts, along with many other conservation organisations, including RSPB, WWF, and CPRE, are all asking MPs to support measures to ensure protection for the environment and wildlife. The full text of the pledge can be read here:http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/GreenerUK
 
There are real concerns that the protection of our environment may suffer when we leave the EU and it’s not just environmentalists that are raising this concern.

You may have heard on the news that in a recent report,  The Future of the Environment after the EU Referendum (4 January 2017),cross-party MPs from  the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) have warned  the Government of the very real risk that vital protections for our environment, countryside and wildlife could be weakened  through the process of leaving the EU. This Committee of MPs is therefore calling on Government to introduce a new Environmental Protection Act before we leave the EU.

Currently around 80% of our environmental laws are tied in with the EU so ensuring these protections for our wildlife and countryside are not weakened during Brexit is absolutely vital if we want a positive future for our wildlife. Currently more than 170 MPs nationally have signed up to the ‘Pledge for the Environment’ but only three of our Norfolk MPs are on this list.

Water vole by Kevin Anderson

If you care about wildlife then now is the time to write to your MP raising your concern that protection for wildlife must not be lost when we leave the European Union.  Let’s show our leaders that protection of the environment is not a side-issue to be thought about only after other concerns, like the economy and immigration, have been addressed but is an issue that is fundamental.
 
 
We all know and understand that a healthy environment rich in wildlife is actually essential to human well-being and the bedrock on which a sustainable economy can be built.  Let’s make sure our MPs understand this too and that they know we want Britain to set a world standard in environmental protection ensuring that our wildlife recovers from current declines.

To see a list of MPs that have signed the Pledge for the Environment and to check if your MP is on the list visit: http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/GreenerUK http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/GreenerUK http://www.green-alliance.org.uk/GreenerUK 

Please add your voice now by writing to your MP asking them to sign this pledge if they have not already done so.   For the Wildlife Trust’s top tips on how to contact your MP visit www.wildlifetrusts.org/Greener-UK/Take-Action www.wildlifetrusts.org/Greener-UK/Take-Action   Decisions made in the next two years are likely to determine the fate of our wildlife and countryside for decades to come.


Help us protect Hickling Broad – the heart of the Norfolk Broads

Please donate today:

•  Call: 01603 625540 

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County Wildlife Action Surveys

Angela Collins, Volunteer Coordinator

Today I went to visit some of the volunteer Community Surveyors who are taking part in our County Wildlife Action Project. I began at Barrow Common in Brancaster where Jenny, Linda, Mary and Rosalind were habitat mapping with Gemma the NWT Project Officer. This means walking the whole of the site, while making up a map of the different habitat areas. I arrived in time for their lunch break picnic and an un-forecasted very heavy rainstorm. This didn’t deter their spirits and as the rain started to ease they set out to do some more surveying. Unfortunately the rain soon started again, and as writing down what they see is such a  crucial part of the survey it was decided that it was not practical to continue, so arrangements were soon made for a date to continue the survey, and some of us headed to a warm and dry tea shop to finish my interview with the team.

Next on to Bowthorpe Riverside, an interesting County Wildlife Site right next door to a modern housing estate. I was warmly welcomed by the group - Sally, Stacey, Carolyn and John - and offered a spray of insect repellent as Stacey had been unlucky to get 31 bites on one visit! There are two other members of the group, Paula and Dominic, who unfortunately couldn’t make today.

The previous heavy rain and the presence of ponies made the going very muddy and difficult at times, but the group was not to be deterred and searched out plants that they had not recorded on a previous visit, and together helped to identify the less common.   

What struck me about both groups was the positive lets get on with it attitude and the way that they helped and learnt from each other throughout the whole process. Both groups were strangers when they first joined the project, but they have quickly formed teams and friendships, dividing tasks, working out who can do what and when, and getting the job done, which is to survey these County Wildlife sites in order that management plans can be drawn up by the Trust.

Thank you to the Barrow Common and Bowthorpe Riverside teams for letting me join them for a few hours and answering my many questions. I very much enjoyed meeting them and seeing them in action. More than 200 community surveyors are involved in the project this year, they are doing a fabulous job and our thanks go to all of them.