By Elizabeth Knowles
The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) are providing information and advice, including free workshops to help farmers and landowners navigate the grant applications required for the various schemes under the banner of Agricultural Transition. They also work with Pasture for Life, to restore ecosystems and implement positive change in our food and farming systems, and to demonstrate the benefits of 100% pure pasture-fed animals.
Under the Future Farming Resilience banner, FWAG are also involved with Bristol University, looking at natural flood management schemes in the South West. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species are running a nationwide ‘citizen science’ survey on water voles, seeking to gather information to inform conservation plans to ensure this species survives and thrives.
Cornwall Wildlife Trust are making plans for a rewilding scheme for Helman Tor, their nature reserve in mid-Cornwall. Working with Ben Macdonald of Real Wild Estates, they are contemplating bringing beavers back to this hill country as well as some of the herbivores who would play a part in restoring a sustainable natural balance to this wild place.
This spring the Trust completed their Kernow Glassa project. Callum Deveney writes: ‘An important part of the project was to look beyond the boundaries of Trust land to see where we could work with others to link the habitats we are improving with more land to create bigger nature recovery networks.’ Besides flood prevention and water quality work, ‘…many of the interventions carried out through the Kernow Glassa project provided multiple environmental benefits, with a great example of this being woodland management work including tree planting. Our woodland management work is helping to make wildlife more resilient to climate change while tree planting is helping capture carbon.’
Photo: Jools Baker