Last week Manchester played host to the International Association for Landscape Ecologists' european congress. Although I wasn't able to join the proceedings in Manchester, I was part of a team leading a field trip for 20 delegates showcasing the landscape scale conservation work underway around Morecambe Bay. We were joined by some leading professionals from across the UK, Europe, Taiwan, Brazil and South Korea who were keen to learn about what we were doing.
As we all met at Arnside and Silverdale AONB's offices the sun came out to shimmer on the mudflats and show off the redshanks and other waders. From the open estuary we headed off into the limestone woodlands to see the work that's being done to support butterflies. People remarked on how intimate the area felt and how popular the wood seemed to be with visitors and walkers. Martin Wain (no relation!), our Morecambe Bay resident butterfly expert, took us on an exploration of the woodlands to see the rides and glades that have been opened up to provide space for violets and bracken - both of which are necessary for many of the fritilliaries in the area.
He is particularly impressed with the landowners support for the work as they can see the value the work is providing for nature, but they could also see that it would also provide benefits for other activities they run in the woods and provide local wood fuel and other wood products. Martin also did a good job at encouraging people to come back and visit the area in spring when the violets would be out and the caterpillars feeding.
After a great bit of networking over lunch we headed out to the reedbeds of Leighton Moss Reserve to hear from David Mower about his life long passion for bitterns, eels and reeds. David has over 25 years of experience managing the 100year old reedbeds. He is dedicated to finding a solution to bring breeding bitterns back to the north west of england. The reedbed is right and the foodstocks are good with over 50,000 elvers this year. But there is only one solitary male who booms each spring, and he hasn't been lucky enough to find a mate the last few years! From October - March many bitterns can be seen wandering through the reeds, but most head off in spring to other places where they know they will find a mate. So as part of the quest to bring breeding bitterns back Richard Miller showed us some of the new reedbeds that have been developed around the area, to connect with the main pools at Leighton Moss. Schemes such as this are harder to develop with landowners as the land use needs to be changed forever, so new reedbeds have only been created so far if someone, like the RSPB, has been able to buy the land outright.
We left the delegates at Carnforth Station, with just enough time to check out the Heritage Centre and the station where Brief Encounter was filmed. They went away understanding a little bit more about the UK's approach to landscape scale conservation and the types of work we're doing for habitat connection and restoration and we'd learnt a bit from approaches they're involved in to.
Jenny