ESCC’s Environment Strategy; At pace & at scale’ (2020)

The ESCC Environment Strategy was published in two parts in 2020, the Strategy (16pp) and the Appendix (38pp) dated March 2020 and June 2020 respectively.[1]  It replaces the first Environment Strategy for East Sussex adopted in 2011. A lot of rhetoric, national dilemmas, and UK concerns are repeated throughout this document. Turning to East Sussex, it states that 470 species that are globally threatened in the county, or in rapid decline. The Strategy is updated to be in line with the 25 year Environment Plan (2018) and Parliament’s declaration of Climate Emergency in 2019.

The Strategy’s vision is ‘protect and enhance our natural and built environment for current and future generations and tackle and adapt to climate change.’  That is a familiar mantra that goes back decades and is invested in UK law. ‘conserve and enhance’. The Strategy is disappointing in what it does not cover. There are no references to nature conservation or soil conservation, SSSIs, BAPs, Ancient Woodland, Wood-pasture, or surprisingly nothing major on biodiversity. It acknowledges the impact on woodlands in East Sussex (which has more than most counties), especially the impact on associated woodland habitats ‘the loss of valued areas for recreation.’

Natural Capital is mentioned, and is comprehensively dealt with in the Appendix; whilst everyone is nervously awaiting the result of the Environment Bill in its final deliberation on net gain in which way to jump.  Nationally, it is interesting to note that OFWAT are aiming to ‘protect and improve at least 6,000km of waterways, and protect and improve 1,800ha of protected nature conservation sites by 2025. One hopes this will trickle down to East Sussex. This will clearly be a rolling strategy for East Sussex, but the document as presented, does not have a functioning feedback email address, and the Team Manager is aware of the various typos and states that further information on nature conservation is to be found in the Sussex Local Nature Partnership document ‘Natural Capital Investment Strategy for Sussex 2019-2024.’  At present, it is a disappointing document.

[1] East Sussex County Council, 2020. Is in two parts i) ‘The Environment Strategy’, dated March 2020 (16pp) and ‘The Technical Appendix to the Environment Strategy’, dated June 2020 (38pp).

https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/media/15587/east-sussex-environment-strategy-2020.pdf

https://www.eastsussex.gov.uk/media/15589/east-sussex-environment-strategy-2020-technical-appendix.pdf  (accessed 01 December 2020).

Note: The above ESCC Environment Strategy 2020 relies upon the following publication for nature conservation issues, facts and figures.

Natural Capital Investment Strategy for Sussex, 2019-2024. Sussex Local Nature Partnership, December 2019. Final Version. (adopted by Sussex LNP October 2019).  73pp.    

Twenty-four Sussex Local Nature Partners (SLNP) participated in drawing together this 73pp compilation of Natural Capital Investment Strategy in Sussex. Both East and West Sussex are lumped together, and obvious nature conservation groups have been involved such as Sussex Wildlife Trust, CPRE, CLA, EA, NE, NFU, SDNPA, ESCC (but no LPAs). This reviewer has been told (Dec 2020) by the on-line administrator of The ESCC Environment Strategy 2020 that it relies upon this document for all the information on nature conservation that is not within the Environment Strategy. It is just over a year since this document was produced (adopted by SLNP October 2019), but it still has not published the assets that it is still counting up. Sussex’s assets are its habitat types, and this document lists these which it classifies as ‘natural capital asset types.’  The assets it is relying on are on page14, which lists, for instance four types of Ancient Woodland.

However, it does not list ‘Wood-pasture & Parkland BAPs’ which are Priority BAPs – a serious error. These are associated woodland habitats of ancient woodland recognised by Natural England. There is a risk that the eventual quantum of assets will only be based on some of the statutorily protected areas such as NNRs, SSSIs, SACs, SPAs and Ramsars whilst other important habitats, protected by other statutory instruments will not be represented in the overall audit.

The omission is replicated in Table 2a (p.68) ‘Terrestrial Assets’, where at risk habitats are highlighted in red.  They do note that woodland is under risk of ‘loss of valued areas for recreation’. There is not a word about ‘Wood Pasture and Parkland BAPs’.  It is as if the law embedded in NERC (2006) – a statutory act – is not recognised.

The report has produced various useful maps across Sussex (too small to expand) and an intriquing ‘Woodland Heathmap’. This shows that there are three areas across the Sussexes, one in the east, one in the north central area of Sussex and one in the east. This is where there are:

‘existing woodland concentrations in Sussex,’ In these areas what is proposed is ‘In terms of biodiversity benefit, new woodland plantings regeneration in the areas of high woodland concentration can be used very beneficially to expand and connect woodland fragments and thus strengthen woodland ecological works.’

 Alarmingly, the document states that ‘At time of writing this strategy, no ‘valuations’ have yet been published for the natural capital of Sussex.’ (http://sussexlnp.org.uk/what-is-natural-capital/).  This is a concerning relevation. Without any valuations there can be no informed or considered view, so the report is not supported by any evidence.  Valuations are awaited to inform the strategy in Sussex, whilst the climate emergency continues.

There are some inherent downfalls in calculating nett gain for the nature conservation, as RSPB points out that removing an ancient woodland to make way for conifers that do a good job in carbon sequestration, plus providing BMX tracts of recreational value, may improve the economic value, but the irreplaceable loss of ancient woodland cannot be quantified. (RSPB (2017) Accounting for Nature: A natural capital account of the RSPB’s estate in England.). Not that anyone is proposing to remove ancient woodland in Sussex, but in other parts of the country the removal of ancient woodland for HS2 has in part been mitigated by replanting.

So, nature conservation in both the Sussex counties is currently held in the balance, whilst the parameters for calculating the assets that the counties are decided. SLNP have not taken Sussex a step forward in knowing what to protect, only advising of the concern that the climate emergency has promoted.  Thus no hope at this stage that the definitive quantitative work for Sussex can seemlessly be slotted into the demands of the Environment Act when it lands on our tables in 2021.  Until their valuations are complete they cannot inform the direction to take to address the climate emergency.

Who Owns England. How we lost our land and how to take it back. By Guy Shrubsole. London, William Collins. 2020. Paperback 376pp   ISBN 978-0-00-832171-0  £9.99

1066 has a lot to do with who owns England today; indeed not a whole lot has changed since then. William the Conquer gave much of his new kingdom to his 200 Norman barons. By the Victorian age 18 million acres of land, or half of England and Wales is still held privately by just 0.01% of the population, this time represented by ‘4,200 Victorian nobles and gentry’. These facts and figures have been meticulously teased out by the author who is an investigative journalist, in conjunction with  colleagues over the last two years. The book deals with the land quantums with sensible chapters on the Crown and the Church, Old Money, New Money, the state, ‘corporate land holdings’ and ‘property owning democracy’. The staggering information is that taxpayers now pay most of these land owners £8m in annual subsidies (figures for 2015), a legacy payment from the desire to reduce the milk lakes’ and ‘butter mountains’ of 2003 crises in Europe from 2003. The figures of land ownership do not add up, since the author believes that about 17% of England’s land is unregistered for various reasons, one of which the Land Registry is still not open to who exactly owns what and where. The Appendices are most interesting and summarise the fruits of these exhaustive investigations. The list of the top 100 land owners is fascinating, so too the list of 24 extant Dukes with their land ownership and the amounts they receive as subsidies. Also of note is the chart on who owns what for all public bodies, the Crown, the Church and Conservation charities; top three are Forestry Commission, the MOD and Highways, with  National Trust, RSPB and Woodland Trust in positions 17-20. The sub-title of the book is summarised with the following ten recommendations comprehensively explored: (listed here:) i) end secrecy, ii) sort the housing crisis, iii) stop subsidies to farmers Iv) restore biodiversity, v) abolish last vestiges of feudalism, vi) reduce tax avoidance, vii) stop the sale of public lands, viii) give people a stake in the country, ix) open up the land to the people, x) introduce a land ethic. This is a well researched book, packed with facts and figures, overflowing with 298 sources of information. There is a small group of colour photographs in the centre of the book, and a good index, though the book is packed with so much data that a comprehensive index would have added far more pages.

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Pembrokeshire. No. 141 in the New Naturalists’ Series. by Jonathan Mullard, 2020. London, Collins. 510pp

The author has already provided ‘Gower’ and ‘Brecon Beacons’ in the same series, so this is a Welsh hatrick, and at 510 pages it is a beefy tome, well worth the read. Jonathan Mullard has spent most of his life working in local planning and has been instrumental in managing National Parks, AONBs and Heritage Coasts. The extent of the Pembrokshire Coast National Park is impressive, as shown on the only map in the book, as it embraces nearly all of the coastal area of the county: its symbol is the razorbill of which there are 8,000 birds in the county.  The book has interesting chapters on its rich geology, caves and archaeology and a good section on the early naturalists. The natural history of the islands is described in detail: for Caldey, Skokholm, Skomer, Grassholm and Ramsey. Skomer being the best place in Pembrokeshire for puffins (25,227 in 2018) and has its own Skomer vole. Ramsey is famous for the black rabbits put there probably by the Earl of Pembroke. Skokholm is famous for its genetically different mice with their failed fused vertebral columns so studied by the late Prof. Sam Berry from Kent (see his books in the NNS (No 109 ‘Islands’ and No 61 ‘Inheritance and Natural History’) and for the largest slow worms in Britain – so much for evolution and natural selection on islands of which Pembrokeshire excels with examples. Manx shearwaters breed on the islands (450,000 pairs) but decreasing numbers of Storm Petrels (5,000 birds) are now recorded. The shearwaters have a 22,000 mile round journey each year to South America. It was interesting to learn that some seabird colonies can destroy their own breeding grounds, in the case of the original ‘immense puffin colony’ on Grassholm it is thought that they undermined so much of the peat layer with their nest tunneling that their numbers declined; the habitat has now been replaced by a large gannetry.   The rugged rocks and castle ruins have been the subject of studies on the rich lichen species, including the cuckoo stones in churchyards. For a region that is steeped in humidity the damp-loving ferns and bryophtyes have been clearly described, as well as the natural history of meres. There is the very rare ‘Pembroke dwarf moth’ to look out for, only re-found recently on the Castlemartin MOD Range: there are only five known sites in the UK. The effects of other industry are covered in this book with the exploitation of the Milford Haven, but the outstanding natural history gems of the rugged Pembroke coast, terrestrial and underwater, have all been thoroughly explored in this book. In keeping with the NNS the book is populated with many colour photographs, many by the author and there is the usual  extensive references and index. For the craggy interior of Pembrokeshire, which is always interesting because you never know what is around the next crag, this is an essential book to have back at base (for it is too big and heavy to go in the rucksack). It is a superb book, well researched, and a delight for all those who have ventured on field trips, or wished they had, since it brings to life the particularly rich tapestry of wildlife that this part of Wales now protects.

Summer books reviewed here include three on butterflies, two travel books (18^th century, and 19^th century) and one on the Wild Boar.

Two new books on butterflies, the first by Matthew Oates (His Imperial Majesty, Bloomsbury, 2020), and the second by Wendy Williams (The Language of Butterflies, Simon & Schuster, 2020), made me re-visit Miriam Rothschild’s ‘Butterfly cooing like a Dove’ (Doubleday, 1991). His Imperial Majesty is reviewed in detail in the previous August 2020 posting.

They are all completely different. Oates’s book is an impassioned, if not intimate review (almost ‘too much information’) of his methodology for searching for Purple Emperor butterflies, ova, larvae and pupae in woodlands. It is obviously emperor-centric and mostly UK centric, and literally he has not left any sallow leaf untouched in his pursuit of the natural history of the species. It is for amateurs and is not a scientific work, though he does say that much more peer-reviewed work is needed to be published. He has a great love of this one species, which is not the case of the Miriam Rothschild’s Butterfly cooing like a dove book, which reflects her great love of all butterflies; she died in 2005. This was probably a difficult book to write as it all about how butterflies express love through art and poetry. It is a unique in dealing with the subject matter. It is an informal and autobiographical anthology that includes works by Ancient Greeks and from Rome, Pliny, Shelley, Neruda, artworks by Picasso. I was taken by her deep love of Marcel Proust –‘is the first and greatest urban naturalist the world has ever known – the others have yet to be born.’ Hopefully there is some hope for some of us yet. It is generally illustrated throughout in black and white and colour. Where Oates does not mention Miriam Rothschild or her uncle Charles, the science journalist, Wendy Williams does include Miriam’s work on butterflies along with many other lepidopterists in her The Language of Butterflies. She interweaves the scientific work and discoveries about the wonderful world of butterflies, often through the lens of the Milkweed butterfly. She speaks for instance her site visits to the declining wintering habitats of Monarchs. Where Oates tries to promote the Purple Emperor as the national butterfly of the UK (there are other worthy contenders), Williams declares that butterflies are ‘the world’s favourite insect’ in the sub-title. The cover is an arresting and electrifying composite picture of dozens of morphos – this has to be the top book cover of the year. Rothschild is for all butterflies.

As for travel books, the first was ‘The Oregon Trail’ (Zenith, 2015) is about a 23-year old from New Hampshire who set out west in 1846 to cross the western part of America. As a chronicler and lover of the great outdoors, it was interesting to read about the habitats and wildlife, not alone the native Indians that he encountered. He has a great way of describing nature, where Proust was urban based Francis Parkman, was a country lover.  The great hordes of buffalo, the Indian villages and vast inhospitable lands they had to cross are described whilst they had to watch their backs – followed by wolves, bears and Indians. Later illustrations showed thousands of waggon trains queuing up to cross rivers on ferries, their waggons enveloped with buffalo hides.  Sadly most of the buffalo and the Indians would be dead a few decades later, mostly due to the new settlers. In this edition the book is illustrated with paintings and early photographs which help to set the scene, often of dying Indian races.  The second travelogue, at least for a naturalist to read was the round the world voyage by the Brassey family from Catsfield (East Sussex)  in their yacht ‘Sunbeam’ (Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam, Burt, 1877).  Anne Brassey was an accomplished plantswoman who described the various garden plants she saw in all ports of call; she particularly liked the Chile coast with its colourful gardens. She and her family travelled with a menagerie of animals which she collected, or was given, in various ports: monkeys, pigs, parrots, turtles, and birds and fish which came on board were often eaten: boobies, albatrosses.. ‘Mother Carey’s chickens’ (Storm Petrels) were often seen around the world.  Sighting of whales and dolphins were also frequently seen. Lady Brassey was a great writer of everyday events. Her descriptions of various places bear no relation to what they are like today, and the idyllic setting of Honolulu, as an example does not compare to that of today. It was infinitely better then than today!

Wild Boar (Reaktion Books, 2017) is part of the growing Animal series from Reaktion and follows the usual format of describing the animal species from earliest times, and its relationship to humans especially by way of symbolism. The author is from Oxford and has brought together a collection of facts and figures that sums up the life of the beast, whose range stretches from Europe to Japan, and into the USA. Different genetic strains determine the colour variants seen. There is a lot of coverage of the boars in the Forest of Dean where they are particularly well known, including photographs of very close encounters with people. As a wild boar lover, I am all in favour of wild boars for their tearing up of the land and boosting biodiversity through stimulating buried wildflower seed to germinate. They are increasingly becoming habituated to humans, that where before they were long gone when they heard a car or a human, now they stand their ground and will charge a car. As a species, they remain highly successful thanks to breeding with domestic pigs and will remain a formidable trophy and symbolism for chasseurs in the future that always defies the determined chasseurs.

In An Old House, by Peter & Sally Varlow. Lewes, Pomegranite Press.  2018

Anyone who appreciates timber-framed buildings in the Weald of Sussex will realise what a significant impact the making of the building had on the local woodland. This book explores the ins and outs, the nooks and crannies, the joints and trusses that went into the construction of this particular house 500 years ago. The immediate impact of felling of trees in the winter of 1474-3 would have denuded quite a lot of woodland. The bare facts to construct this building included 143 trees (weighing 27 green tonnes) as well as 233 small timbers, held together with 619 joints.  The joints included 440 mortices and tenons and 138 lap joints. All this wood could be sawn from a block of woodland about 50 acres in size. The tree expert Oliver Rackham estimates that such a block would produce 100 suitable trees over a 50 year period. This is a wonderful book about a typical house in the Weald near Lewes. It draws together the history of the various owners, the local trades and how the house was created in the landscape: a masterpiece in every sense.

Wilding, the return of nature to a British farm.  Isabella Tree. London, Picador. Paperback edition 2018. 363pp.

Rewilding is the common parlance for ‘Wilding’.  As the author says wilding ‘is restoration by letting go’ (p.8), and that the stubborn ‘re-‘ reveals a naïve ambition to recover the past (p.152). The farm dropped the ‘re’ to concentrate on a ‘long term, minimum intervention, natural process-led’ operation (p.160). And a great success it has been. Knepp is synonymous with rewilding.

The sub-title is an understatement. The British farm in West Sussex is no ordinary farm, it is 3,500ac with a castle (and lost town) that was visited by King John in 1201. The book is about how the farm changed from being a reasonable profitable dairy and arable farm (though unsustainable p.39) to a farm for nature conservation over the last, now twenty years. It is written by one of the co-owners of the farm with her partner Charlie Burrell and is essentially the modern history of Knepp.  And what a struggle it has been.

There are seventeen chapters, some of them about single species, such as beavers, nightingales, purple emperors and turtle doves – in a sense the book could have been dedicated to the turtle dove (on the book cover) because all the conservation ‘strategy’ had led up to optimal habitat for this species, and for nightingales, purple emperors and many other invertebrates too including plenty of BAP species. There can be few wild areas spread about Britain that are becoming refuges for wildlife, but this is one of them.

The change from intensive farming to farming for nature conservation took at least ten years for an income stream to materialise. The Countryside Stewardship Scheme agreement funded the management of part of the estate from 2000-2010, and the Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) chipped in for another 10 years from 1 January 2010 (p.175).  This is what used to be called ‘being paid not farm’, which is not the case here, and where there was the perverse situation of EU giving grants to farm intensively and grants to reverse the effects of farming intensively. By 2010 they had 283 Longhorn cattle ‘a by-product of rewilding began to present itself as a potentially significant income stream’ (p.246) without any need to feed or pay for fences, sheds etc and few veterinary costs.

There were plenty of critics of the Knepp Wildland Project from locals, professionals and statutory bodies who could not get their heads around the concept of wilding. Natural England gave Isabella a run-around for at least 10 years. The concept was completely alien to NE – it did not fit with their modus operandi – which cannot operate without evidential information about wilding to inform any engagement with Knepp – or as Keith Kirby of NE said it was a project  without ‘sound scientific base for what is proposed’ (p.93). So it was a NO from NE, even though NE had been involved with the ‘Wild Ennerdale’ project in the Lake District in 2003. Surprise, surprise. The decline from NE was even after a site visit to see the hugely successful recreated grasslands and wetlands of the Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands created on a reclaimed polder. In her attempt to rewild 1.5miles of the River Adur that flows through the property it had taken 16 years of failure (up to 2017 publication) to get a grant from the many authorities, which she states as shameful (p.229). The aerial colour photographs show it all. A huge success.

The book is incredibly well researched with scientific papers per chapter quoted at the back. There is a sublime chapter on scrub which is probably not seen in any other book. The author goes to great length to present all the background information on the subject before getting to the subject in hand – but it still presents a good read, a crammer for some of the species subjects, whether it is pigs, cattle or deer. Overall she is very frustrated at the slowness of authorities to accept rewilding, but then it goes against all conservative conservation strategies that are not based on abandonment of habitats. However, the author is delighted about the wildlife fruits of the venture in the mosaic of habitats created and the clamour of wildlife to inhabit it, in some cases the best populations of animals in the southern England – for instance maybe the only place in Britain where turtle dove numbers have increased: Sussex has 200 of the 5000 pairs in Britain (p.194) and Knepp possibly has the greatest density of bird surviving in England (p. 201).  Autecological information gleaned from the Knepp estate about turtle doves  allowed them to decline the local ‘Operation Turtle Dove’ project proposed by NE in 2012 and the author sadly called it a case of ‘the principle failings of conventional conservation’. (p.200) Altogether it is an absorbing good read and all ecologists, naturalists and anyone interested in nature should read the book. A one off.

The High Weald AONB Design Guide was adopted by Rother District Council on 11 Feb 2020. The on-line edition is dated November 2019. 44pp.

The fifteen councils took two years to collate how they would like to see the design of houses appear in this huge AONB.  Generally they have succeeded with a review of all matters regarding topics such as ‘the right built form’, ‘connecting beyond the site’, structuring and parking. The 45pp is filled with photographs of typical Wealden buildings the design of which is to inspire, inform and to follow, also with photographs of how not to do it – new buildings which the Weald will have to live with for decades to come. Quite how all the new designs with twiterns, cat-slide roofs and open landscape gardens can be successfully and sensitively integrated into the already busy environment is down to planning regulation. No laws and Acts are mentioned to support their admirable appeal. The recommendations are all based on the Design Council’s Guide ‘Building for Life 12’ (it is ‘broadly based on’), the NPPF (2019), Guidance and the National Design Guide, and LEMPs.  They would like a lot of work on the planning of new sites to be sorted out Design and Access Statements. ‘Ongoing management proposals for the open space and habitats should be included up front as part of the planning application as part of a Landscape and Ecological Management Plan.’ In a nod to biodiversity metrics which are being slowly introduced, they state that ‘The wildlife of the High Weald is embedded in the landscape character and so proposals for habitat creation and enhancements or biodiversity net gain should also be able to make positive contributions to landscape character.’  There is a great deal of ‘should’ do this (252 mentions) as opposed to ‘must’ (13), which goes against the grain of BS42020 2016.  There is plenty of emphasis on ‘multi-function green spaces’ ‘incorporating drainage systems within green space’ with illustrations of a suitable example (so watch where you are treading – the new open green spaces may have some watery surprises. Generally the idea to ‘enhance habitats and wildlife’ is plausible, and ‘opportunities for wildlife should be maximised’ are maxims that have been trotted out over the years, and there is nothing tangible for developers to grasp other than their usual suite of bat, bird, hedgehog boxes, log piles etc.  When metrics are eventually obligatory then more positive habitat creation will be obligatory on or off site, and the Weald will benefit accordingly. However, that day is slow to arrive.  In the meantime, readers are directed to the Wildlife Trusts’ ‘Homes, People and Wildlife’ for further advice and inspiration.