As usual, the last 2 months of my apprenticeship have been mega busy (apart from my week off in Egypt that is!) and I find myself having to look in my diary to remind myself what I have been doing! October was perhaps my busiest survey month yet, which doesn’t really make much sense as things were starting to die off and it was difficult to survey plants that I am only just getting to grips with. However, as Patrick keeps reminding me, grant applications and reports need done at all times of the year, so I need to be able to survey at all times of the year.
At the beginning of October Patrick and I visited two farmers in Northumberland. I am doing two very different applications to Natural England for agriculture grants for them. One of the farmers is entering into Entry Level Stewardship, which gives him a set amount of money per hectare as long as he has a certain number of points, which are obtained from various conservation options. It was a fairly straight forward application for me to do, just a few grass margins, a few skylark plots, a bit of low input grassland and some hedge management. The best part about the English application system as opposed to the Scottish SRDP system is that they send out paper maps to be coloured in – no more struggling on with digital mapping programmes, hurrah! I was delighted to spend several hours merrily colouring in with my brand new crayolas, and produced a truly spectacular map. I had to stop myself from drawing on some wee birdies! The second farmer we visited is going into the English Higher Level Stewardship scheme, which pays a greater amount per hectare for more complicated management options. The farmer was really lovely, and spent the whole afternoon showing us round his interesting farm. He has created 3 native wild flower meadows which he harvests seeds from to sell to country parks and the local authority. I think it’s great that he is creating a local seed source for others to benefit, and the pictures of the meadows in the height of summer were stunning. The farm also has lots of old parkland trees which fringe just about every field, which make the place feel rather grand. I have begun the background research for his application and will be carrying out a visit at the end of November to map all his features properly.
I have also carried out several full day visits to Ford and Etal estate, a massive estate which we are compiling an HLS agreement for. Every single habitat and feature on the farm, from bogs to ponds, to woodlands, down to dry stone dykes, needs to be assessed and condition scored. For an estate as large as Ford and Etal, this is VERY time consuming. However, this has been great experience for me, as I have been looking closely at habitats and thinking about what qualifies as a “good” habitat. The problem is, I disagree with some of the terms Natural England have us score against, and so I find it difficult to classify some habitats. For example, when condition scoring woodlands they ask you to assess the canopy cover, and those woodlands with a complete canopy cover score higher than those with a less complete canopy. My problem with that is that conifer plantations usually score well even though they are pretty rubbish for wildlife, and more natural woodlands with open bits of canopy and fallen trees which provide great habitats, don’t score so well. If only I wrote the rules….
Maggie (my ecology mentor) and I spent two full days assessing the woodlands, and got ourselves well and truly stuck in Holburn Moss, which some eejit had attempted to plant trees on. The trees had all died and fallen over and had created a right obstacle course for us. We fell over A LOT and got stuck A LOT. If I told you it took us an hour to cover about 300metres, I’m not sure you would believe me, but it did!
I have also visited some of the Scottish farmers, including a visit to Gretna Green just a few days before my holiday, which prompted many of my friends to ask if I was eloping. Sadly not. The farmers we met at Gretna and Canonbie are both entering into SRDP, so we were just meeting to do some quick survey work, and to finalise plans.
Since I returned from my holidays I have been busy in the office, writing up management plans, drawing maps (sadly, back on the digital mapping programme), and entering figures online for all my SRDP applications. The deadline for the applications is the beginning of January (a very silly time if you ask me, I think they are trying to discourage applications by making it near Christmas) so I am trying to get as much done as possible well before the deadline. Patrick has given me 6 applications to do on my own, which is both challenging and rewarding, and I hope they will be successful. The problem is everyone is now chasing an ever decreasing pot of money, and I fear only those farmers with SSSIs or exciting new projects will get in. This means a huge part of Scotland will go unmanaged for conservation as farmers plough up their grass margins and wild flower meadows, and who can blame them if these features are going to cost them money?
On a happier note, I have organised a Christmas shindig for the apprentices, so I am looking forward to catching up with everyone and letting our hair down. I’m sure some photos will follow!