This year I’m using the two days volunteering my company gives me to spend time with Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust.
Today, I’ve been out with them at their amazing Strawberry Hill reserve. This is the rewilded farmland site they took over recently and one of the most inspiring places I’ve ever visited. Taken out of agricultural production nearly 40 years ago, the site has been allowed to return to nature. When I visited in spring, the dawn chorus was perhaps the loudest and most intense I’ve ever heard it in the UK.
Today, at the far end of the bird breeding season, I was helping with work to maintain a wildflower meadow. The rangers had already cut the long grass, and cut some more today, while the volunteers spent the day raking the cuttings and piling them up in large stacks of hay at the edge of the open area.
At first it did seem slightly odd for management techniques to be reapplied to an area where nature had been allowed to take its own course over the last few decades. However, without some intervention, the whole site would eventually be taken over by scrub and then succession woodland. The alternative is to have a richer and more varied pattern of landscape with woodland, scrub, open areas, meadows and water. We were, essentially, acting as large herbivores who, in truly wild areas, would help to create that diversity of places. As much of the site is presently unfenced, these animals have been missing during that rewilding period. While traditional breed cattle are now in parts of the site, to do that work, much of the site remains unfenced, so there’s still a role of us to some of the clearing.
Given the temperature was well into the mid-20s today, it was hot work but by the end of the day we had cleared the whole area. Tomorrow, I will be at another Wildlife Trust site, possibly doing something similar but also cutting willow. I’m hoping I don’t wake up too stiff tomorrow!
I’ve long had an interest in rewilding, hoping that landscape-scale nature restoration projects can bring back some of the wildness that the UK has lost over time. Having taken trips to various parts of Europe watching wildlife, it is quite easy to see how impoverished and lacking we are as a nation in our natural environments. Whilst small local nature reserves have their place, I have always yearned for bigger, wilder landscapes where nature is in control and the hands of people can barely be detected. Rewilding has given me hope that we can get more of the wild back into Britain.
Rewilding, at its heart, is about letting nature get back to doing what it does best, without too much human interference. Think of it as giving the environment a chance to breathe, without all the fences, fields, and tidy boundaries we’ve imposed on it for centuries. It’s about reintroducing species that used to roam freely and restoring landscapes that were once wild but have been gradually lost to farming, development, and urban ecroachmentl. So, whether it’s bringing beavers back to our waterways or letting forests grow back over our largely treeless uplands, rewilding is nature’s way of getting a second shot at being itself.
The Knepp Estate in Sussex, which was once a traditional dairy farming estate, has been transformed into one of the UK’s most exciting, and most famous, rewilding projects since its shift away from intensive agriculture in the early 2000s. Now, with wild ponies, cattle, deer and beavers roaming freely across the 3,500-acre site, it’s become a thriving haven for wildlife, with species naturally returning while others have been given a helping hand. We paid a visit in 2020, once COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted, and spent the day wandering around a landscape long lost from most of England. We particularly wanted to see the white storks which has been reintroduced to the site and the project saw the first storks to fledge in England in the early 1600s. I also had my first ever glimpse of turtle doves; an increasingly rare site in the UK.
Last summer, while volunteering for a couple of days with the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust, I was told of an exciting project that the Trust was raising funds to support. Strawberry Hill, nestled in the quiet countryside near Knotting Green, Bedfordshire, was once a productive wheat farm. However, in the late 1980s, the landowner, Hugh White, made the decision to stop farming the 377-acre site, taking advantage of ‘set aside’ payments, allowing it to return to nature. Without the constant ploughing and cropping, the land slowly transformed. Dense scrubland and young woodlands emerged, creating a thriving habitat for a variety of wildlife, including nightingales, cuckoos, and turtle doves. Over time, the site became a refuge for many species, quietly evolving into a significant piece of rewilded land. This was rewilding before rewilding became a ‘thing’.
By the early 2020s, the Wildlife Trust recognised the importance of Strawberry Hill and took steps to secure its future. In 2022, they leased the land, and by 2024, they were able to purchase half of the reserve, thanks to generous funding from Biffa Award. The remaining portion required additional support, so BCN launched a crowdfunding appeal aiming to raise £1.5 million. The response was overwhelming, with nearly £500,000 raised from more than 3,800 individual donors, as well as contributions from trusts and private benefactors. As a result, Strawberry Hill is now permanently protected, ensuring that its unique ecosystem will continue to flourish for years to come.
Having heard about the site late last summer, I decided to wait until spring to make a first visit. I had intended to first go in May when the season would be in full flow, and I still intended to, but with time on my hands today, I decided to travel the 20 miles or so for an earlier visit.
With no facilities for visitors at the site (yet) and no formal parking, I left my car in a sensible place close to a footpath into the site. Strawberry Hill isn’t open to the public as such but it is cross-crossed and bounded by several well-maintained public footpaths and bridleways, providing quite extensive access through the reserve.
Heading into the reserve, I was immediately surrounded by scrubland interlaced with larger trees and open areas of grass. As I carried on, the scrub became thicker and there were fewer mature trees, except for those along the route of a land drain. Having seen the site from aerial photos and a video on the Trust’s website, I knew what to expect, and there are similarities with parts of the Knepp Estate. The path became more enclosed by scrub with occasional views deeper into the site through openings although the scrub was still evident beyond. The site has been left to nature longer than Knepp and so I expect the succession from open fields, to scrub and on to woodland may be further ahead, however, Knepp has continued to be stocked with large herbivores (at much lower densities than the previous dairy operations) which has brought a different dynamic to the ecosystem. It will be interesting to see what the Trust decides to do with the management of the site and how mammals, large and small will play a role.
Despite the strong winds today, the birds were very much in evidence, even for this early part of the season. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard so many Chiffchaffs in one area nor so many Bullfinches. There was also a good selection of other woodland and farmland birds in smaller numbers as well as signs of badger and muntjac deer. It’s still too early for many of the summer migrant birds to have arrived in significant numbers but I’m hoping a return in May will reveal good numbers that the habitat promises to attract. I’m particularly keen to return to find those turtle doves and nightingales.
One thing that struck me more than anything about this first visit, is the stark contrast between Strawberry Hill and the surrounding farmland. Wandering around the site, as you get to the end of a footpath, you suddenly find yourself out into arable fields, like those this site used to be. You emerge from tentatively blossoming scrub and young woodland, through an opening in a hedgline, onto open, flat, windswept monoculture fields of young wheat or barley; you abruptly move from nature into modern intensive agriculture. It’s quite a jarring moment as you move from one space to another and it broke me out of a meditative state. Wondering slowly listening to birdsong is when I’m at my most mindful and ‘present’ in the moment; I’m about as relaxed as I can be while standing up. It brought home to me just how far modern agriculture, and the landscape it has created, is from nature; I’m hoping Strawberry Hill and other rewilding projects can have the same effect on many more people.
I’m really excited by this project and can’t wait to go back in a month or so but also to see how it progresses over the coming years.
What the site used to be…
If you want to know more, here’s a link to the Wildlife Trust’s website.
Daft Mumblings 