How a British millionaire is rebuilding the countryside, one farm at a time

This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Table collaboration.

Julia Davies had one goal in mind when she sold her share of Osprey Europe outdoor equipment company a few years ago. The entrepreneur decided that she was going to spend her millions going back in time, returning parts of Britain’s farmland to nature. Nature is in crisis in the UK, he argues, and its threatened wildlife needs all the protection it can get.

A few months ago, the first steps towards his rebuilding dreams came with the purchase of 170 hectares of fields and meadows surrounding Court Farm, near Bere Regis, Dorset. The land cost almost £ 4 million, but thanks to the prospect of a bridge loan from Davies, Dorset Wildlife Trust has been able to acquire the property and has started to create a natural park there.

Pastures where Friesian cattle once grazed and fields of wheat, corn and barley, which fed the Court Farm herd, will now be returned to nature. New forests will spread over the pastures, wildlife and plants in the hedges will colonize the fields, while a network of deep ditches that have drained the farm for decades will be filled in and blocked. The wetlands will return to the landscape, along with the populations of frogs and newts.

Other new residents will also be attracted to build homes at Court Farm. These could include yellow hammers, silver fritillaries, and sand lizards. “The wildlife in this country has been pushed aside for too long,” Davies said. “We have been farming too intensively and we urgently need to give wild animals and plants a chance to regain the field.”

Crucially, the plan adopted by Davies, a business lawyer turned green activist, could serve as a model for future rebuilding projects as the UK struggles to counter its growing biodiversity crisis. “Instead of buying my own land to rebuild it, I decided to lend money so that conservation groups, such as wildlife trusts, could gain control of land and raise money, through local appeals, crowdfunding or grants from the town halls. Then they could give me the money back. “

What people are reading

The reasoning was straightforward, he added. Once a group like the Dorset Wildlife Trust owns land, it is much easier for them to raise funds for conservation work. “A charity cannot bid on land until it has all its ducks in a row. You have to have funds and trustee approval, but often you can’t get trustee approval because they don’t have all of your funds ready.

“It is a circular problem, so I decided to find a way to solve it. I lend money so the charity can buy the land, the charity repays me, and then I use that money to fund another project. That way, I can help rebuild a lot more land for my money. “

In fact, Davies’ promise of money was enough for the Dorset Wildlife Trust to obtain funding from local authorities, the Dorset council, and the Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole council.

“The councils supported us because Dorset, like other parts of the UK, faces a problem caused by the accumulation of chemical fertilizers in the runoff water,” explained Rob Farrington, who has taken over the management of the Court Farm project. .

Swaths of British farmland are regularly sprayed with fertilizers. Rain and waters rich in nitrates and other chemicals fall from the fields and are washed away, often through sunken trenches dug to keep the land drained and dry. Some of the trenches at Court Farm are over three meters deep. This polluted water then runs into streams, then in the rivers, and finally, in the case of Court Farm, in Poole Harbor to the east.

“Combined with runoff from other farms across the county, this is now causing real headaches,” added Farrington. “Nitrates have caused algal blooms in Poole Harbor and are now causing severe ecological damage along dozens of miles of shoreline in the bay.”

As a result, the two councils awarded the trust more than £ 3 million to ensure that nitrate runoff from Court Farm was stopped, a move that would help mitigate Poole Harbor’s ecological headaches. This cash, plus money raised from various local legacies, was used to pay for Court Farm and set Davies free to begin working with another conservation group to rebuild a new portion of local farmland, a process that intends to continue for years. come. “The bottom line is that we would not have gotten there without the promise of Julia’s money,” added Farrington.

It is a double boost for ecology. River pollution is reduced while habitats for wildlife are restored, a point emphasized by Brian Bleese, executive director of the Dorset Wildlife Trust. “Wildlife in Britain has been pushed to the margins for too long. More than 70 per cent of the UK’s land is now under agriculture, which means that most of the wildlife has been huddled in hedges. We have bright green grasses throughout the country and very little within it. We need to change that and get wildlife out of the hedges and back on the land. “

In the case of Court Farm, its thick hedges of oak, elderberry, blackthorn, hawthorn, ash, dogwood, field maple and other plants cut across the land creating a broad, trellis landscape. The undergrowth there provides homes for mammals such as the hazel dormouse and spiders including the fierce-looking wasp spider. As wild vegetation spreads, these animals and other creatures are expected to move slowly and make homes in the wild landscape.

Emerging wetlands should also provide a home for reeds and attract dragonflies and amphibians, such as great-crested newts. “All species that are crying out for a little mess to live on will find this attractive,” said Farrington. “And of course wetlands retain greenhouse gases very well and have an excellent carbon footprint.”

However, the wildlife trust team emphasizes that they have no fixed species in mind when rebuilding Court Farm. “This is not a typical conservation scheme where you take a precious little remnant of habitat, like a chalk embankment or heath, and work hard to keep it as it is today in order to preserve a specific endangered animal. who still lives there, ”Farrington said. “We are simply removing the high maintenance aspect of modern agriculture and waiting to be surprised by what takes over the landscape. In that sense, this is an experiment not only in financing but also in conservation ”.

Interestingly, one of the first tasks involved in preparing these new habitats will be handed over to the pigs. “They’re perfect for tearing up the soil, breaking the surface, and that will allow wild plants to take over fields that have been closely cultivated over the past decades,” said Farrington. “So we are going to borrow some pigs from a local farm to start the whole business.”

It will take years to restore the wild habitats in this little corner of Dorset, but Bleese, Davies and Farrington are confident that they can create a resource that will not only help the wildlife, but also help the local community. “It is not the case that people living in the country have open access to land,” Bleese said. “They are often excluded from the large farm and farm trenches that surround their homes. They have also been isolated from the field. “

As a result, there are plans to increase public access and use agricultural buildings in the natural park and open spaces for community events. as well as the creation of local jobs. The site will also continue to play a role in food production, with meat from grazing animals and provision of plots. “A key part of the project is figuring out what the local communities want us to do with the land as it is repopulated,” added Davies. “Most importantly, we have started and hopefully this will provide a model for more reconstruction schemes that can help save nature in Britain.”