A report of an eight week Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Travelling Fellowship
INTRODUCTION
Pastoral
farmers in the UK are being tempted to raise water levels on previously drained
land in order to restore and enhance wetland biodiversity.
However, most land was drained over 30 to 50 years ago and so there is limited knowledge available regarding management
techniques used to maintain grass under these conditions and problems have
arisen. Often
“weed species” proliferate, grass is regarded as low quality and there are concerns about the impact of
parasites. In spite of high
incentive payments, it has proved difficult to manage such land as part of a
modern farm business. Take up of such schemes is not high.
I
looked at similar
high water level pastoral farming that is being undertaken within French, Dutch and
Polish wetlands. I considered the
approaches taken to managing such systems in terms stock
types used, general husbandry, maintaining productivity and growth rates,
dealing with disease, poisoning and parasites, sward management and control of
weed species. I also looked at how such management systems contribute to the maintenance
of biodiversity.
I
visited two or three major wetland areas in each country, having contacted farmers and
land managers via Government Conservation Bodies, NGO’s and farmers unions
prior to departing the UK. By
undertaking a series of site meetings (four to six in each wetland) and engaging in detailed
discussions with land mangers; I managed to develop some understanding of different
wetland systems in terms of history, culture, farming practice, ecology,
hydrology, conservation legislation and most importantly practical land
management.
At the end of my fellowship tour I had a serious mishap. The fellowship ended at the Biebrza Marshes, one of the most spectacular of Europe's wetlands; and from there I travelled down to Warsaw to collect my partner in order to have a week long holiday together, visiting Krakow and the Tatra Mountains. Sadly, my hire car was broken into in Krakow and most of my possessions were stolen. Most painful was the loss of the laptop containing my notes and over two hundred digital images, each named and dated, that together formed my log.
As a result of this loss the structure of my report has had to be adapted and though I am confident that I have remembered the most important key points there may be some inadequacy in the detail.