Land management and nature recovery
Farming
While much of the nation’s wildlife has disappeared, the North Pennines still holds on to flower-rich hay meadows, more than 80% of England’s black grouse [16] and some of the highest densities of breeding waders (curlew, lapwing, snipe, golden plover) in the UK [17]. The primary reason for this is the activity of farmers and land managers, connected in large part to the widespread uptake of agri-environment schemes. These schemes are an important means of support for upland farming and reward protection and enhancement of semi-natural habitats; however, it is important to acknowledge that the prescriptions-led approach to these schemes hasn’t always helped nature or farmers.
High Nature Value farming is a term which is now used to describe low-intensity, traditional farming systems which support high levels of wildlife and biodiversity. Having typically developed under the constraints of a harsh environment and extreme weather conditions, these systems tend to be sustainable in the long-term as they do not degrade the land on which they depend. Parts of the North Pennine uplands, e.g. Upper Teesdale, have multiple examples of where high nature value farming systems have helped to conserve biodiversity.
Much of the North Pennines is used for raising grass-fed livestock. This can be relatively low intensity farming, but some of the land is worked hard with stocking levels requiring high levels of inputs, and some land has become ecologically simplified as a result.
Some within the industry are moving towards regenerative and agroecological approaches to farming which put an emphasis on healthy soil ecology, or low-input grazing systems where reducing stocking rates can increase profitability, benefit nature here by reducing harm from nutrient and chemical inputs, and have wider benefits by reducing the need to grow and transport feed from elsewhere [18].
Farming is undergoing some of the most significant change in decades with the transition from the CAP to UK post-Brexit agricultural policy, with an emphasis on public money being provided for public goods. This creates opportunities but also great uncertainty for farmers.
This plan is intended to help provide farmers and other land managers with more clarity about action they can take to aid nature recovery, and of the public benefits relating to nature, that are likely to be supported under new funding streams such as Environmental Land Management (ELM) and the Farming in Protected Landscapes programme. High Nature Value, low input, and regenerative systems can all make a contribution to nature recovery goals, but more ambitious land management approaches will also be needed in places, where nature recovery and associated public goods are the primary goal, and food production a by-product. By their very nature, not all parts of the country can be said to have an equal role to play in food security and provision in the long-term.
The social and economic realities of farming systems are important to nature conservation strategy. Across the large areas outside nature reserves, conservation of semi-natural habitats is more likely to be effective and meaningful if embedded in the cultural and socioeconomic activity of the communities which created and now maintain them. Reaching more ambitious nature recovery goals will mean significant, perhaps radical, changes to what farmers do and how they are rewarded, and farmers will need significant support to make these transitions in a way which is fair.
Moorland management
Whilst much of the North Pennines appears relatively wild, the landscape is in fact highly modified through human activity. Most of the moorland in the North Pennines is currently managed for grouse or sheep or both.
By the early 1990s farm subsidies based on headage payments had encouraged high levels of sheep grazing in the North Pennines, often above the natural carrying capacity of the land, resulting in overgrazing over a number of habitats including moorland. At the same time other government policy changes had led to a reduction in the number of farms keeping cattle.
Grants for draining of moors, largely after the second World War, by cutting grips (drains), led to dried-out peatland areas and the degradation and loss of blanket bog habitat, as well as the release of carbon from peat soils. Much of this damage is currently being addressed through large-scale grip-blocking and the restoration of areas of bare and eroding peat.
The practices of moorland burning or cutting to encourage young shoots of heather as food for red grouse or livestock has maintained an open landscape with little mature heather or developing scrub. In recent years evidence has emerged of the damaging effects repeated burning can have on peat soils, and Government policy now bans this practice on designated sites with peat deeper than 30 cm.
The use of medicated grit and of widespread predator control has led to sometimes artificially highly populations of red grouse, and low numbers of red grouse predators such as stoat or fox. This suppression of these predators also helps breeding success of other ground-nesting birds, such as waders and black grouse, and reduces predation of water voles. However, it leaves ecosystems out of balance, with species such as rabbit increasing, and consequent impacts on some species and habitats of importance. This is a highly modified landscape where it is hard to untangle the effects of intensive gamekeeping, the absence of top predators, and the suppression of habitat and structural diversity, on the balance of species present.
It is also hard to predict to what extent moorland management for sheep and grouse might continue in its current form. Some estate owners are looking to less-intensive models of management, and in many parts of the UK moorland estates are being bought by companies for the purposes of investing in carbon and biodiversity off-setting, where grouse shooting will play no part. What the impacts on priority species might then be from the withdrawal of gamekeeping on such land is also an issue to consider.
Whether or not management for red grouse remains the predominant land-use, there is potential to increase opportunities for wildlife through the further restoration of hydrological function on peatland, changes to grazing regimes to allow more structural diversity on heathland and bog and the creation of scrapes and pools for waders and other wildlife.
Changes to reduce the intensity of management for grouse, for example with less, but more targeted, predator control, removal of medicated grit, and reduced intensity of heather management is likely to have a positive impact on some species, such as adder and merlin. Careful monitoring of others, such as ground-nesting birds, would be needed, alongside further research, in order to assess to what extent interventions such as meso-predator control or heather cutting are still needed in the absence of top predators and/or grazing animals.
Chemicals and other inputs
Invertebrate numbers in the UK and around the world are in rapid decline, and this is true even in nature reserves [47]. Alongside habitat loss and climate change a major factor appears to be a mixture of pesticides (insecticides, herbicides and fungicides) in the environment and so there is an urgent need to reduce reliance on human-made chemicals in land management and farming. There is limited data about chemical use in land management in the North Pennines, but known current uses include various worming agents (anthelmintics) such as Benzimidazoles and Avermectins used in grouse and livestock rearing, Azulox for bracken control (under licence), and the herbicides Clopyralid and Triclopyr (marketed as Thistlex) for the control of creeping thistle and Glyphosate – a more generic herbicide. The most concerning of these is perhaps the use of worming agents which are known to have an impact on the food chain by killing dung beetles, earthworms, springtails and other invertebrates [48]
Climate change and nature recovery
The serious consequences of climate change are now part of mainstream public awareness. There is increasing concern that climate change poses an existential risk to humanity [2], and almost 14,000 scientists have declared “clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency” [3].
Met Office 50-year forecasts for climate change in the north of England predict mean temperature rises of around 2 degrees in both winter and summer. Inherent uncertainty in the models and over how we will act in future, mean that this rise in mean temperature could be as much as 5 degrees.
Rainfall predictions for the same period are subject to less certainty, with some model scenarios showing less rain in summer, and some substantially more [4]. Extreme weather events and unpredictability are hallmarks of increasing global temperatures.
However, the urgency of nature recovery is not so widely acknowledged.
The crises of climate and of nature are inextricably linked – they share some of the same root causes, exacerbate consequences for each other, and sometimes they also share solutions.
Most action to restore nature and natural processes on a landscape scale will have carbon sequestration benefits. For example, restoring blanket bog habitat by blocking remaining grips (drains) on peatland will halt losses of carbon and eventually lead to carbon sequestration [19], and a more natural grazing regime (more extensive, or pulse or mob grazing) on pasture leads to greater root depth [20], greater plant and soil invertebrate biodiversity and more carbon sequestration [21].
However, there are also risks of harm to nature from well-intentioned action on climate. For example - planting a bioenergy crop or coniferous woodland where broadleaf woodland or natural colonization by scrub might have been a viable alternative. So, alongside and integrated with urgent action to tackle climate change, more action is needed to allow nature and natural processes to recover.
Nature-based solutions such as peatland restoration are applicable to climate change mitigation as well as to the delivery of other public goods such as nature restoration, but they are not a substitute for absolute cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and there is concern that long-term greenhouse gas removal projects can and do deter short term emissions reductions. [22]
Natural flood management and nature recovery
Natural flood management seeks to reduce the impacts of downstream flooding by using relatively natural methods (as opposed to hard engineering solutions). This often means working high up in a catchment, seeking to ‘slow the flow’ by holding water further up for longer in high rainfall or snow melt conditions. It is therefore highly relevant to the North Pennines. Natural flood management is a great example of one of a suite of nature-based solutions which help solve a human-made problem and which will restore ecosystem function whilst almost always benefitting wildlife.
Established techniques include:
- Blocking peatland grips (drains) and gullies and restoring vegetation on bare and eroding peat can help store more water on moorland and restores blanket bog habitat.
- Creation, regeneration or natural colonisation of woodland and scrub, planting and maintaining hedgerows, lowering grazing pressure or creating ungrazed buffers on watercourses, all increase the roughness of the land surface and slow water down as well as supporting biodiversity.
- Management of woodland to ensure a good structural diversity, including ground flora and understorey, will delay rainfall reaching the ground.
- Leaky barriers and dams, positioned correctly, can slow flow in peak flow conditions, and provide habitat for water voles and other wildlife.
- Building water storage capacity in ponds, or in surface run-off attenuation features, which fill-up in flood conditions and release water slowly, can be an effective technique to reduce peak flow.
- River and floodplain restoration, including the re-meandering of rivers, or use of woody debris in streams, can greatly slow the flow of water in a watercourse, providing many more micro-habitats for invertebrates, fish and more, and providing temporary storage capacity in its floodplain at peak flow.
- Regenerative grassland management techniques build root depth, increased water permeability and infiltration, as well as building soil health.
An obvious natural flood management solution which has not been attempted in the North Pennines, and which would also bring enormous biodiversity benefits, is the introduction of beavers into suitable areas. See Priority outcomes and measures (below).
Rewilding and nature recovery
The term ‘rewilding’ is often used to describe the restoration of natural processes and restoration of ecosystems. However, its increasingly common usage to describe everything from wildlife gardening to the release of apex predators in a large landscape makes it unhelpful as a term to guide nature recovery strategy.
The rewilding movement provides a legitimate challenge to nature conservation practice to look more to natural processes and functioning ecosystems rather than more interventionist and resource-intensive approaches to conserving wildlife.
In much of the UK, the nature value of many habitats derives from their long history of active management (e.g. hay meadows, rush pasture) and the removal, or even a reduction, in human management is likely to have negative consequences for some species considered as priorities.
Elsewhere though, current management is holding nature back significantly, and changes are needed to let natural processes take a much larger part in ‘managing’ the land.
This plan refers to the restoration of natural processes, moving along a spectrum of wildness, from highly modified and managed environments to environments where nature can take more of a lead. However, this is not simply a case of stepping back and watching nature take its course; intervention is often still required. Some examples below will help explain this (and see Box 1 Restoring natural processes / ecological function).
Intervention is often required at the start to restore (or accelerate the restoration of) the conditions necessary for nature recovery to take place:
- Blocking grips on a peatland to restore a more natural hydrology so that blanket bog vegetation can thrive.
- Re-meandering a river from its straightened channel to link it with its floodplain and restore a more natural hydrology.
- Introducing Sphagnum mosses and cotton grasses into areas of peatland to create a more natural species composition.
- Introducing beavers into a river catchment to both restore a more natural species composition (the beavers themselves and the species that are attracted to the new habitats created) and restore a more natural hydrology.
- Taking repeated hay crops from a fertilised grassland in the early years of grassland restoration to reduce soil nutrients and establish a more natural nutrient status.
Intervention may be needed on an ongoing basis because the small scale of the restoration simply doesn’t allow for all natural processes to be established:
- Creating a more natural grazing or browsing regime across a large estate may involve free ranging roe deer and a small number of cattle (for example). But in the absence of predators for roe deer their numbers will need to be controlled in order to allow scrub development, and the cattle will also need to be a managed herd, to limit numbers and ensure welfare standards.
- In the absence of top predators, allowing more scrub and woodland development over large areas of land could negatively impact on ground-nesting birds by providing habitat and cover for more meso-predators. So, meso-predator control may be required to maintain ground-nesting bird populations.