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Nature's Tapestry Natures Tapestry 28pp:Layout 1 13/7/11 16:40 Page 1 NATURE’S TAPESTRY The story of England’s grasslands and why not all grass is green. Natures Tapestry 28pp:Layout 1 13/7/11 16:40 Page 2 2 Nature’s Tapestry - The Grasslands Trust The Grasslands Trust Contents The Grasslands Trust is a UK Registered Charity (No. 1097893) and Company 3 Executive Summary Limited by Guarantee founded in 2002 Executive Summary and recommendations in order to reverse the decline of our wildlife-rich grasslands. 4 Introduction Acknowledgements Thanks to everyone who contributed to 5 Chapter One the production of this report, especially What are wildlife-rich grasslands the authors of the case studies, both in the report and on the accompanying webpage. 10 Chapter Two Thanks to Lucy Cooper, Deborah Alexander and everyone else at The Grasslands Trust The values of wildlife-rich grasslands for helping produce the report. Thanks also to Clare Pinches and Andrew 13 Chapter Three Thompson at Natural England who helped What is happening to England’s grasslands to develop the report. The production of this report was financially supported by The European Commission DG 21 Chapter Four Environment; and Natural England. What factors are driving change on grasslands Author: Miles King Editor: Andrew Branson, 26 Conclusions British Wildlife Publishing Design: Greenhouse Graphics 27 The Grasslands Trust The RSPB believes that appropriate management of England’s semi-natural grasslands is a priority, given their importance for biodiversity and key ecosystem services. Nature’s Tapestry effectively highlights the value of these grasslands and the threats they face - it is an important report on a vital subject. Gareth Morgan, Head of Countryside and Species Conservation (Policy). The production of this report is supported by the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism through its DG Environment part-funded 2011 work programme. The views in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission. The following organisations endorse this report: Natures Tapestry 28pp:Layout 1 13/7/11 16:40 Page 3 Nature’s Tapestry - Executive Summary 3 Executive Summary Semi-natural grasslands have evolved “efficient” food production, not on the through human activity over the past 6,000 multitude of other public goods semi-natural years: there are practically no natural grasslands provide. grasslands in England. There are now very Private landowners, conservation charities, few semi-natural grasslands left in England: local authorities and government agencies all modern agriculture has led to their work together to protect and manage semi- destruction over the past 60 years. There is natural grasslands. There are some excellent an important resource of grasslands that local and national grasslands projects making have been partly modified by modern good progress, but semi-natural grasslands agriculture, but which still retain significant are still very vulnerable to the twin pressures value. This resource is undervalued by of intensification and neglect. Grasslands in society and provides important public SSSIs are better protected than they were, goods. but those outside SSSIs are very vulnerable. As well as being rich in wildlife, landscape Funding from agri-environment schemes character and archaeology, semi-natural helps but entry level funding is poorly grasslands provide a wide range of targeted. Most CAP funding is through the environmental goods and services: carbon Single Payment Scheme. The rules governing storage, flood prevention, water purification, this scheme are unhelpful for semi-natural crop pollination, tourism, health, well-being grasslands and fail to recognise their and inspiration. Intensively managed environmental and heritage value, and agricultural grasslands provide one service: economic handicaps. The regulations that cheap food. There is a danger that taking a are supposed to protect semi-natural purely economic approach to valuing semi- grasslands from intensive agriculture are natural grasslands runs the risk of the largely ineffective. intangible values being ignored. Development pressures still threaten Semi-natural grasslands depend on grasslands, and changes to planning rules sympathetic management, such as low- could increase these threats. Grasslands are intensity grazing by livestock or horses, or valuable for local communities and The mowing for hay. The costs of making a Grasslands Trust is developing Community change from intensive to sympathetic Grasslands to encourage this. Dog-walkers management can be off-putting for and horse-keepers, in particular, use semi- landowners, because the current agricultural natural grasslands. Their impact can cause subsidy system places a value only on damage, but need not do so. Key recommendations ■ Implement in full the recommendations ■ Improve targeting of agri-environment in ‘Making Space for Nature’. scheme funding to ensure it is used to ■ Reform the Common Agricultural protect and ensure management of Policy in the long term so that CAP semi-natural grasslands. payments are made for the provision ■ Notify as SSSIs all surviving significant of environmental public goods and semi-natural grasslands. the protection of the cultural ■ Revise the EIA (Agriculture) Regulations landscape, and targeted to support so they become an effective tool for low-intensity agriculture. protecting semi-natural grasslands. ■ Short-term reform of the CAP should ■ Prepare a comprehensive Grasslands “Since the arrival focus on improving the rules governing Inventory, based on Natural England’s Single Payment, reform the permanent Lowland Grassland Inventory. pasture rules, amend the eligibility ■ Ensure the new planning system of neolithic criteria, improve the GAEC rules to protects existing semi-natural grasslands prevent damage to semi-natural farming culture, from development, and supports grasslands, and ensure they are managed restoration and creation of new sympathetically. A Premium should be 6,000 years ago, grasslands in new developments. introduced for farmers who commit to grasslands have maintain their semi-natural grasslands. dominated the English landscape” Natures Tapestry 28pp:Layout 1 13/7/11 16:41 Page 4 4 Nature’s Tapestry - Introduction Introduction Grasslands are the foundation of the English landscape. They may not hold the mystery of our ancient woodlands but England is still at heart a ‘green and pleasant’ land. It is England’s hedged tapestry of meadows and pastures that have so often drawn people back - the ‘meadowsweet, and haycock dry’ of Edward Thomas, and Browning’s fields of ‘buttercups - Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower’. The story of England’s grasslands is one that stretches back across millennia, and has for much of that time been an evolving partnership between our pastoral ancestors and the ebb and flow of the wildlife that has lived among them. Change has always been a part of the grassland cycle, but since the Second World War the pace of change has been such that many of the traditional patterns of land-use have almost disappeared, along with the wildlife communities that developed alongside them. For 6,000 years the English landscape was a palimpsest – layers of previous land-use, wildlife and human activity had developed one upon another, with traces of the previous epoch still remaining and influencing the next. In the past 70 years, the palimpsest has been almost entirely erased, leaving only those features that have survived below the deepest plough furrow, on the steepest slope, on the very poorest soils, or the wettest marsh. Those semi-natural grasslands that survive not only hold some of our richest wildlife, but are an irreplaceable link to understanding our long relationship with the land. Chalk downland like this has been a part of our English landscape for centuries. Natures Tapestry 28pp:Layout 1 13/7/11 16:41 Page 5 Nature’s Tapestry - Chapter One 5 Less than 100,000ha or just 3% of England’s lowland grasslands are still rich in wildlife, archaeology and history. Chapter One What are wildlife-rich grasslands? Grass is everywhere from your lawn to the time, grassland wildlife would have survived practices led to a peak in arable production local park, to vast swathes of the open in naturally open spaces within the of 6 million hectares in the first half of the countryside. Just over 5 million hectares of Wildwood, possibly kept open by natural 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th England’s farmland is covered in grasslands events, such as fires and floods, as well as by century, arable production had declined and of one kind or another. That’s over half the herds of native herbivores (e.g. auroch, elk, the area of permanent grassland increased agricultural land in England. This figure does bison, moose, wild boar, beaver, red deer), again to 6 million hectares. During the early not even include all the lawns, parks, golf most of which are now long extinct. Since part of the 20th century, grassland courses and all the other places where grass the arrival of Neolithic farming culture, management started to change, with the grows. Even arable land is dominated by the 6,000 years ago, grasslands have dominated development of new varieties of grass and special group of grasses that humans have the English landscape. the introduction of artificial fertilisers such as domesticated – wheat, barley, rye and basic slag and super-phosphate. The drive for The arrival of farming brought livestock and maize. But these rely on
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