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To
whom it may concern.
Importance
of the Knepp Wildland Project.
The Knepp Wildland project
began when the owner, Charlie Burrell,
decided to end the uphill struggle of
maintaining a viable farm under intensive
management on intractable, infertile clay.
The original aim was to restore the historic
Repton landscape surrounding the castle. In
addition, he wanted to explore the
possibility of producing high-quality,
organic-grade beef, pork and venison under a
regime that allowed the animals to roam
across the Knepp Castle Estate as freely as
possible, with minimum intervention.
Longhorn cattle, fallow deer, Tamworth pigs
and Exmoor ponies were released in small
numbers.
This strategy opened up
scientifically valuable opportunities to
study how these large herbivores drove
changes in the environment. This meant that
all the vegetation changes from intensive
arable and dairy to ‘wildland’ would
occur as the result of natural processes.
Over the
course of the last 8 years, since the
project got underway, many experts and
scientists across the UK and further afield
on mainland Europe have visited Knepp and
given their wholehearted support and advice.
Today, there are over 1000ha of lowland West
Sussex within the project. One of the
aspects that has been studied in some
considerable depth is the biodiversity of
the project area. A number of baseline
ecological surveys have been undertaken so
that the changes in wildlife can be
monitored over time. To date, there have
already been 23 UK BAP Priority species
recorded on Knepp, including great crested
newt, water vole, five different species of
bat and twelve different species of bird.
Turtle doves, skylarks and yellowhammers,
three of many species showing an alarming
decline in recent years, are all showing
signs of increase on Knepp. Over time, Knepp
could develop a biodiversity and wildife
interest that would have local, regional and
possibly even national significance.
The
reasons for this are partly because of the
large size of the project area in comparison
to nature reserves in southern England.
Larger areas are able to support more
species than smaller ones. However, the
Knepp project has a far wider importance in
a regional setting. Further to the west,
also on the Low Weald clay of West Sussex,
lie other areas of known ecological
importance, National Nature Reserves such as
Ebernoe Common and The Mens, important areas
of ancient woodland. To the south-west are
Pulborough Brooks and Amberley Wildbrooks,
low-lying wetlands crossed with streams and
ditches. Knepp itself has large areas of
open water, wet grassland and developing
wetland scrub, as well as drier pasture and
smaller areas of woodland. This complex of
habitats in West Sussex supports an
impressive number of different species –
hundreds of different kinds of birds,
wildflowers, invertebrates and mammals. It
is this wildlife that shows how these
different habitats are connected, for
instance, at a larger scale, migrating
wildfowl that travel across the landscape
alighting on wetlands to shelter and feed,
and barbastelle bats, some females of which
breeding in The Mens woodland travel over
12km to forage in the wet, riverine
grasslands of Knepp.
At a smaller scale, butterflies such
as brown hairstreak and purple emperor need
tall treetops in which to court and mate,
but which lay their eggs on blackthorn and
sallow scrub respectively.
If the
Knepp Wildland project develops as all those
involved with the project hope, the wildlife
it supports will in turn help to maintain
the biodiversity of a far wider area of
countryside. This is valuable in its own
right, but is also vital for human health
– we need the ecosystem services that
these rich areas of wildlife can provide.
But will this optimism be realised? Despite
all the effort that Charlie Burrell has put
into the Wildland project, and despite the
support from organisations such as Natural
England, the National Trust, Sussex Wildife
Trust, the British Trust for Ornithology and
the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and
scientists from a number of UK universities
and European institutions, a large area of
this ground-breaking project is under threat
from a proposed landfill sited just to the
south west of Knepp. Projected to receive
many thousands of tonnes of non-inert waste,
if it is allowed to go ahead, this
development will bring with it all the
smell, noise, litter and vermin associated
with landfills, as well as a very real risk
of water pollution from leachate and run-off
that will flow downstream into Knepp. The
fight is now on to protect the Knepp
Wildland project, as well as to secure the
right to a clean, pollution-free environment
in this rural area of West Sussex for all
residents.
Theresa
Greenaway
25th
July 2009
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