Image Credit: Lockhart Horsburgh
On New Year’s Day, we announced that some land was coming back to us, after being used for some years as grazing land and arable fields. This land will be known as ‘Wild Saltholme’, as we plan to let nature direct the future development of this area. We aim to keep everyone informed as to what that means and entails.
So, we have put together a series of Frequently Asked Questions about this project. We will add to this blog as the project progresses.
How large is Wild Saltholme?
100 hectares. This is equivalent to 1 square kilometre, or 140 football pitches.
Who currently owns Wild Saltholme, and who owned it in the past?
Wild Saltholme belongs to Teesside Environmental Trust (TET) and, in 2007, the RSPB signed a 99-year lease for this land as part of the Saltholme reserve. Up until 31 December 2021, Wild Saltholme had been leased to a farmer for livestock grazing and arable cropping, but it has now returned to the management of the RSPB.
What is the plan for Wild Saltholme?
Ultimately, we expect Wild Saltholme to do its own thing with a very passive management regime (letting nature direct future developments). We expect Wild Saltholme to revert to rough grassland and scrub but, to kick-start the process and allow ecological restoration to take place, we intend to undertake several initial interventions. These include:
We will then step back and monitor how things progress. This will include looking into how the soil and water at Wild Saltholme change with the new approach, particularly linked to the absorption and/or release of carbon. Longer-term, we are aiming to mimic natural processes that would have shaped the landscape in the past. This may include re-introducing grazing animals, which would serve as a proxy for the roaming, wild grazing animals that used to be found in the UK.
We will be posting updates over the coming months and years as the project unfolds.
What are the benefits of human intervention? Why not just leave it and let nature take its course?
Nature is resilient and often just needs to be given a chance to recover and flourish again. Species can move into areas without any human intervention. So why are we ‘getting things started’ at Wild Saltholme?
Well, the resilience of nature relies on biodiversity; the more species there are in an area, the higher the biodiversity. Having lots of species, and healthy population sizes of each, means that nature has an insurance policy. If one population declines, another can perform similar roles in that environment to prevent ecological collapse.
However, human activity can reduce biodiversity in an area, pushing habitats and species past the point of no return. If too many species are taken out, intentionally or unintentionally, the area loses its ability to bounce back. The few species that can survive in the conditions will dominate and no more species will be able to compete with them for space. This has happened at Wild Saltholme; the area has historically been ploughed and re-seeded with rye grass to feed livestock. The conditions created has favoured the dominance of this rye grass, suppressing the natural diversity of grasses, herbs and flowers that was likely once present.
By undoing some of the changes we have made (for example, breaking up the storm culvert and ploughing up some of the grass monoculture), we remove some of the barriers to different species being able to re-colonise an area. Once these species move in, others are more likely to join them. We have already seen this happen in the new dragonfly ponds on the main Saltholme reserve. They have quickly been colonised by multiple plant and animal species, some of which are nationally very rare, none more so than the critically endangered Bearded Stonewort that is only known from two other sites in the UK!
In short, a small amount of human intervention at the start of the project will mean nature can ‘take its course’ more quickly.
Image Credit: Ben Andrew, RSPB Images
Will there be public access to Wild Saltholme?
Not yet. We want to give plants and animals time to get established in this land. There is currently no public access to this field and so the change of management will not affect the visitor experience of the reserve.
However, the plan is to run events and tours in the future that will allow organised access to this land.
How will this project affect food production and farming?
According to the government website (2020) utilised agricultural area in the UK covers just over 9 million hectares. The area of land we are giving back to nature is equivalent to 0.001% of this. This means this project will have a minimal effect on food production in the local area.
In fact, this project is set to benefit UK agriculture by enhancing the area for pollinators upon which 75% of the crops we grow for food are dependent on. Pollinators are species that transfer pollen from one plant to another, leading to more efficient reproduction of that plant species. Pollinators include a wide variety of insect species, as well as some birds and mammals. By providing a home for these pollinator species, crops in neighbouring fields may well benefit.
Of course, UK farming and farmland is vital in the fight against climate change (buying food produced in this country reduces the distance over which it needs to be transported) and in ensuring communities have access to food. Farmland is also critical to the survival of farmland species such as curlew and skylark. Therefore, the RSPB is working with farmers and landowners to develop and/or rediscover farming techniques that benefit both people and wildlife. Our ongoing projects at Hope Farm are a good demonstration of this mission.
Image Credit: Patrick Cashman, RSPB Images
What surveys have been done to determine if Wild Saltholme is suitable for this project?
We have been working with Teesside University to conduct both species and habitat quality surveys. These have included:
We will continue to survey this land throughout the project, so we can see how things are changing.
How is rewilding/restoration (‘passive’ conservation) different from ‘traditional’ conservation?
Firstly, it is important to note that both ‘traditional’ and ‘passive’ conservation are crucial; one is not better than the other.
‘Traditional’ conservation is all about maintaining areas in their current form; it involves restoring degraded habitat and/or creating areas of habitat that we think are suitable for an area. In this way, forests remain as forests, wetlands remain as wetlands, and so on. There are different forms of ‘traditional’ conservation, including species, habitat, and landscape conservation.
Species conservation looks to maintain the conditions beneficial to a particular species or group of species (for example, creating tern islands that create the conditions needed for common terns to nest and breed). Habitat conservation is about management to maintain, restore and create habitats. Landscape conservation is different again, but we may look to do habitat (and species) conservation at a landscape scale.
But, if left to its own devices, nature does not remain static. A process called ‘succession’ occurs over time. In short, species moving into an area will change that area, creating conditions that are ideal for another group of species. In this way, some wetlands would eventually dry out and become woodland. Conservation is like hitting the pause button on succession at the point that we think is appropriate for that area and the species we want there. Traditional conservation can also be used to protect vital habitat that is being lost in our wider landscapes, like heathland, which needs human intervention to be maintained.
‘Passive conservation’ (rewilding/restoration) is the long-term restoration of ecosystem processes over a suitable area, with the aim of moving towards passive management, where this provides net benefit for biodiversity and people. Instead of looking at the species and seeing what habitat they need, we allow the habitat to do what it wants and see what species move into the area. The ‘restoration’ element involves getting the land in question into a state where natural succession can occur, which means the tools used will differ depending on the project in question. For example, one of the ‘rewilding’ tools is to introduce livestock as proxy for missing large herbivores. However, our project will initially remove livestock to give plants time to colonise, before reintroducing livestock that will graze the land in a way that mimics that of missing large herbivores.
Rewilding/restoration may mean creating gaps in vegetation to allow other seeds to move in. It may simply mean removing culverts and concrete to ensure there is water flowing naturally through an area. Then, we take a step back and see what happens.
Of course, there are different levels of rewilding. At the lowest level, we simply allow nature to guide how we manage that area. The other extreme is to stop any human activity in that area. For our project, we’re taking the middle road; we want people to be able to enjoy this area which is why we are hoping to run guided tours and events once the ‘restoration’ stage of the project is complete.
Won’t changing Wild Saltholme release carbon?
There will be a small amount of carbon dioxide released initially. But we and researchers (from Teesside University) predict that more carbon dioxide will be absorbed by this land over time than is released by ploughing. This is because of how carbon sources and carbon sinks work…
Areas can either be carbon sources or carbon sinks. A carbon source is somewhere/something that produces carbon dioxide. A carbon sink absorbs carbon dioxide and locks it away, preventing it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.
Things that absorb carbon include plants, water, and organic material such as soil and sediment. By ploughing strips in the field and breaking up the grass sward, we will be releasing some of the stored carbon. However, we are more than compensating for this by allowing other plants to colonise. Adding in ponds means carbon dioxide will also be stored in the water itself and in the pond sediments. Different plant species absorb varying amounts of carbon dioxide. So, by encouraging more species to grow in this area, we will increase the potential of this land as a carbon sink.
For more information on carbon sinks and how they work, visit the National Geographic website.
How much will the project cost (the public)?
The project will not cost the public anything unless you choose to donate money to the RSPB (which is a charitable organisation).
In terms of how much the project will cost the RSPB, so far, we have spent about £20,000 on removing internal fences, replacing an old perimeter fence, and ploughing. Future expenditure will be on completing the new perimeter fence and establishing hedgerows.
These are all the questions for now, but we will update this blog with more FAQs as the project progresses.