Background

Landlife and Creative Conservation.

Landlife and Creative Conservation Landlife is an environmental charity that has continually worked in challenging circumstances and has looked towards innovative approaches to landscape problems. Landlife has developed the philosophy and practice of creative conservation - creating new places for wildlife and encouraging people to enjoy them. This work has been documented in publications like Wildflowers Work (Landlife, 1995). The success of this work has ultimately led to the establishment of the new National Wildflower Centre in Knowsley on the outskirts of Liverpool.

Work sowing wildflowers on unusual substrates and subsoils in particular, has led to practical demonstrations involving practical biodiversity action. Many of the solutions have been replicated by other groups around the country. For example, the Teeside Wildlife Trust is now undertaking work using wildflowers on waste slag materials. Often these solutions have been employed in an urban context, but increasingly their relevance to the wider problem of habitat loss in the countryside becomes apparent. The major challenge now facing the agricultural countryside is eutrophication.

"A typical English county in the 21st century is awash with chemicals - nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus - from farm fertilisers and air pollutants. Vigorous aggressive plants that relish conditions of high fertility are having a field day throughout our lowland countryside, swamping the majority of wildflowers that thrive best in naturally infertile conditions." Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Plantlife, 2000.

Soil Inversion

Landlife's work in Huyton dating back to the mid 90's involved stripping off topsoil, and sowing on the underlying subsoil with a simple matrix of wildflower species, The result was that in the space of just seven years the total number of species rose from 16 species to 57. Landlife was able to undertake this project at no cost owing to the sale of topsoil, it proved to be a rare example- that of creating a truly sustainable landscape. Due to the productivity of the grassland being considerably reduced management was minimised to a very low level and an attractive and popular landscape feature replaced a species poor and neglected one. The cost of any management can be offset by the value of seed collected from the site. Applying these principles to the wider countryside is much more difficult, since obviously whole-scale stripping of topsoils would be impractical, and remove a valuable resource.

Landlife's work with woodland species dating from the pioneering Bluebell Recovery Project (1995) and more recently the national Woodland Wildflower Project has highlighted the need to address the paucity of work done to improve the diversity and attractiveness of woodland ground cover. It has become apparent that most of the community woodland planting will have little more interest than trees and grass for many years to come, and have considerable budgets for weed control and management. For this reason Landlife developed the idea of soil inversion. This involves turning the weed free and lower fertility subsoil over the eutrophied and weedy soil. We presented this idea to a variety of peer groups - including a special Woodland Wildflowers Conference in Wolverhampton in April 2001 (jointly organised by Landlife and the National Urban Forestry Unit), and at the International Society for Ecological Restoration Conference in November 2001. The idea met with broad approval and interest from restoration and forestry professionals.

Policy Context

The project will meet many of the sustainability policies the government has set itself.

Climate Change

Of particular note the government supports the need to link existing areas of wildlife value to create corridors by which wildlife can migrate in response to climate change pressures. Summer rain is forecast to be 50 - 60% more and winter rain increase by 20-30% by 2080. Devon is forecast to have a climate similar to the south of France by 2050.Clearly new approaches to tree planting and moisture retention, such as soil inversion, will be needed to cope with these likely impacts.

Loss of Biodiversty

The Countryside survey has highlighted the loss of species richness and diversity including common species. More recently the BTO reports on the loss of farmland birds and the decline of Starlings and Sparrows (down 50%) highlights the lack of food in the countryside and the loss of grassland habitats as a major causal effect. Break New Ground specifically aims to create new grasslands which our background research has shown supports extensive populations of farmland birds.

Seed provenance

Whilst some specialists advocate not moving plants more than 2 metres due to cytological differences in DNA, others state the fact that genetic differences in species can be greater across short distances than long distances and that adaptive variation rapidly creates local character. In Break New Ground, Landlife will advocate the use of simple mixes of species that have a U.K wide distribution. A policy which has the broad support of delegates a joint Landlife and Plantlife expert seminar held in 2001 that examined the issues of plant provenance. The proceedings of this seminar are being produced by the National Wildflower Centre and will form the basis of an agreed way forward for all new creative conservation projects. Landlife will, via the Woodland Wildflower Project promote local sourcing to supplement its basic sowing and enhance local characters. The newly crated areas may or may not develop into recognisable National Vegetation Survey Classification but will none the less form important reserves for wildlife and biodiversity. Much ecological practice in the U.K is unsuitable as it seeks to produce NVC classified habitats on a geographical basis in the face of climate change. Whilst we support every effort to conserve valuable sites of nature conservation value, Landlife recognises that natural processes are dynamic and need to adapt to the changing circumstances we find ourselves in today.

Water Framework Directive

With the discharge of all pollutants into surface water to be controlled by 2012, Break New Ground's organic approach to tree growth and weed control will help to alleviate fertiliser and herbicide leachate and runoff into surface waters.

International Agreements

The project will help the UK to meet Biodiversity Action Plan targets and fulfil the governments commitment targets in the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation adopted in April 2002.