A century of care: Wildlife Trusts mark 100th birthday with woodland project | Wildlife

TThe place where Norton Wood once stood is now a vast field of rotting wheat stubble. The ancient wood was torn down during World War II. No trace of it remains – at least on the surface. This ghost in the landscape only persists in the name of the local village: Wood Norton.

But the trees will soon burst forth again and the wood will grow back after the Norfolk Wildlife Trust marked its 100th anniversary by buying a swath of farmland to bring nature back to life.

The first of the Wildlife Trusts, a national coalition of 47 independent charities with almost a million members and 2,600 nature reserves, marks its centenary on Friday.

A Norwich doctor, Sydney Long, started the county trust movement when he brought together a group of 12 “subscribers” at the George and Dragon pub in Cley, north Norfolk. They snapped up nearby marshes for £5,160 at auction, transforming 407 acres into “a bird sanctuary for all weather”.

Today, rare birds still thrive at Cley, one of more than 60 wild places supported by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

But its purchase of 136 hectares of Wood Norton, for £4.6 million, reflects a transformation in the way nature conservation charities save wildlife: rather than simply protecting isolated fragments of species-rich land, they seek to restore lost habitats and boost bioabundance.

Eliot Lyne, chief executive of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, describes Wood Norton as “one of the most significant habitat creation projects in our 100-year history”.

Taking the Guardian on a tour of Wood Norton’s pretty valley of peaceful fields, Steve Collin, head of nature conservation at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, said: “Traditionally, conservation was simply about protecting rare species. It had to be done, but there is a growing realization that many of our most common species are also suffering. Biodiversity and bioabundance are two sides of the same coin. We can’t wait until something is truly rare to start looking after it.”

Wildlife looks set to return to Wood Norton. The air is filled with singing larks which, this year, will nest in the arable fields undisturbed by the plow. Deer watch us from afar and a Chinese water deer emerges from a yellowish thicket at the edge of an old pond. There are kestrels, badger tracks, fox scents and soon the fields will fill with arable weeds providing a nectar banquet for the insects.

Restoring wildlife to neglected lands or relatively unproductive fields is key to reversing the disastrous nationwide wildlife decline, according to conservation scientists and nature-minded farmers. As Collin says: “This wildlife that we deplete is also the one that takes care of us. »

The Wildlife Trusts also find that there is strong support for restoration, particularly from younger generations, although the transformation of farmland into wilder land is not universally welcomed. Critics say a country that already imports 48% of its food should not abandon its food-producing land.

“We have no intention of taking land out of production where we need it,” Collin said. The soils at Wood Norton were third grade agricultural land (the first and second grades are the best food producing soils). “These soils rely heavily on artificial fertilizers and chemicals, and the heavy clay requires a lot of diesel to cultivate.”

Collin also argues that the trust is supporting neighboring farmers through what will unfold at Wood Norton: newly nature-rich land will provide pollinators for crops and natural pest control in the form of predatory beetles, while retaining more water on Wood Norton land will reduce both flooding and droughts downstream.

It will also improve water quality, with the Wood Norton purchase made possible thanks to £3.8m from Natural England’s ‘Nutrient Mitigation Scheme’, which funds the removal of land from intensive farming near sensitive river catchments, reducing the flow of nitrates and phosphates into polluted waterways.

Under the government scheme, the new nature reserve will reduce nutrient pollution in the River Wensum and the Norfolk Broads over a period of 125 years, allowing developers to build a number of homes in a wider catchment.

“We will create a bigger and better habitat for nature,” Lyne said. “But it will be fantastic for people too. We are creating a wild place that will capture carbon, allow the land to act as a natural floodplain again and in which residents and visitors can explore, learn and feel connected to nature. This land purchase has also helped unlock local housing development – so as well as creating new habitats for wildlife, we are also contributing to efforts to provide housing for our communities.”

The trust’s first major task is to stir the canalized Wood Norton Canal, which flows into the Wensum, a chalk stream of international importance. The stream may also turn out to be a chalk stream.

A pair of beavers have been found living wild in the Wensum 6km upstream, but the animals are still controversial in arable landscapes and the trust may have to rely on diggers to create new meanders and “leaky dams” in the stream, which will improve water quality and rapidly increase wetlands and a suite of species from snipe and egrets to fish, amphibians and dragonflies.

What happens next at Wood Norton reflects another big change in a century of conservation: the belief that the land must decide its fate.

“We don’t want to go from a man-made arable landscape to a man-made wildlife landscape,” Collin said. “If you do that, you risk trying to force the wrong thing in the wrong place. We have to be nimble and adapt to what the landscape wants to do.”

The desire to restore “natural processes” was popularized by the success of the rewilded Knepp dairy farm in West Sussex. Over time, herbivores such as cattle and ponies could be returned to Wood Norton to ensure that a mosaic of open grassland existed alongside revived woodland around Norton Wood.

Collin, who spent two years looking for suitable land for restoration, is excited about Wood Norton’s potential. “The farming family that owned this land respected it,” he said. “They kept trees and hedges that many would have torn down, but it was hard work to make a living from them. We need places like this and nature-friendly agriculture – otherwise we’re going to live in a world without wildlife.”

An antidote to gloom

The county’s Wildlife Trusts started with 12 ‘subscribers’ in a pub. Nationally, they now have more than 945,000 members. I’m part of their growing group of 33,000 volunteers because, like many, I’ve found an antidote to global pessimism by taking small steps to restore nature in my neighborhood.

Over the past year, my volunteer efforts to help the Norfolk Wildlife Trust bring back wildlife have focused on growing oak trees from local acorns and helping school children do the same. The trees I raised will be returned to Wood Norton and another new woodland springing up next to Norfolk’s largest ancient woodland, just 2 miles from Wood Norton.

This year I’m raising money for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust to undertake more local nature restoration by running the London Marathon with a big handicap: I’ll be dressed as a badger, the Wildlife Trusts’ national symbol.

My Guardian stories might become tomorrow’s paper, but one of the oaks I raised might still be standing a thousand years from now. In the meantime, watching wildlife bounce back and take over lands where they have been banished for decades is inherently joyful and hopeful.