In 2010 an area of the inpenetrable young conifer was destroyed by fire. The fire service were on site for three days putting out the fire and damping down the embers. This area is now a carpet of young birch saplings, 6 to 10 inches tall.
In the gaps that remain there are heather shoots everywhere. Both birch and heather have responded to the potassium-rich ash in the soil which provides nutrients, and they are now in a race for sunlight and, ultimately, dominance of this new clearing. The heather grows steadily but the birch is a woodland pioneer which will race ahead and certainly win if we let it. This is a tortoise and hare situation, except this 'hare' won't stop for a nap just before the finish line. Without our intervention the birch will quickly monopolise all the sunlight and the heather will wither and fade away.
Sadly, our heather-y heathlands have withered and faded from much of the English landscape, especially in the High Weald. Approximately 80% of our heathland has disappeared in the last 200 years, and with it the wildlife that depends on these areas. The heathland at Broadwater lasted longer than some. Unfortunately, most was lost just in the last 50 years. Woodland cover has increased, locally, nationally and globally in recent times, much of it being pioneer birch in previously open areas. We have to make the terrible decision of choosing which is most threatened, and so the most important at this time. We choose to save the heather and we'll work to control the birch, and give the heather the chance to flourish.
In our woodland at Broadwater Warren we'll remove planted pines to create new clearings where birch and other native trees can naturally regenerate. It's a shame that we have to juggle the demands and needs of our wildlife in discrete pockets we call nature reserves. The wider countryside should (and could) provide all our nature, and these difficult decisions of what is rarer would not be necessary.