Manage or leave alone

[wanlock dod]

Hi,

I am curious as to the approach that folks take towards "wildlife gardening", particularly whether you specifically manage the garden (or parts of it) for wildlife, or just leave it alone (again for the wildlife), and why do you do things the way that you do?

Dod

[Deb London]

I usually intensively manage, and once managed, leave it well alone. For example, there is an incredible amount of upheaval when creating a new pond, obviously. But the pond is then left to do its own thing once I'm happy with it (apart from weeding or maintenance every few years). Paths for access are essential in my garden, so I don't trample and kill things. I stick to the paths and try not to interfere.

Probably the most managed bits are the open spaces. They are maintained at different heights to encourage different species. I have to remove grass from a lot of the wildlife area to help nectar and pollen rich species. This is ongoing.

In the pictures you can see what I mean.



1. At the moment there is a lot of disturbance and maintenance required to try and grow the early nectar 'bar' for the bees.

2. One of two long grass areas hardly ever cut or managed, for certain butterflies and other species, especially inverts.

3. A line of bare earth, which I hoe occasionally (some thrush species benefit from this) to maintain a visual separation.



4. Pale-coloured paths help ensure I don't squash animals travelling to the ponds etc.

5. I learn to live with the untidiness and try not to meddle.

[wanlock dod]

My approach has usually been to leave things alone, on the basis that I probably can't do things better than nature can, and I don't really have any particular "wildlife aims". I am not really that interested in protecting individual species, and much less individuals. Most of the management I've done so far is not mow. Aside from that I've planted a few plants, more for me than the wildlife, but these tend to be things like brambles, currants and other berries, and a few fruit trees. Some other trees have also been planted, but only at the insistence of the council when some protected trees were removed.

[Deb London]

The way I understand it from reading posts on WAB and books is that you have to do something sometimes. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Take the pond that you create in your garden. You have to manage it sometimes. Otherwise it really won't last that long. Management is not necessarily a dirty word. In the old days many ponds were managed by farmers, were they not? They didn't become over-vegetated and they weren't allowed to fill with debris as they were needed by livestock. Many farm ponds fell into decline because they have been replaced by troughs with piped water and changes in farming practices. Species that relied on our farm ponds began to suffer. Some garden ponds can create a new habitat for some of these species. But left to their own devices they will fill with leaves, become eutrophied, leak, dry up etc.

With no management all your garden might become a wood and this could happen within an average lifetime (or less - I grew one as a child simply by regeneration, although I supplemented it with planting as I loved to experiment/meddle). Where I live now, I think the woodland would be composed of ash and sycamore (mainly). And then, given a few more years, I think you'd get "high forest" with lowered biodiversity. Depending where you are you could get other species moving in. Yew would create a dense monoculture for example. Not a great habitat for wildlife.

And like it or not, many species do rely on man. They have evolved with farming and woodland management practices that were followed for thousands of years. Until recently (well at least the agricultural revolution, recently being a relative term). We don't follow these practices any more. We possibly can't always afford to; to live off the land we have to make a decent profit. So that leaves a hole (a massive great crater?) that gardeners could help to fill in, especially if they were co-ordinated (which of course, they are not, but one can dream).

Being human I am supposedly blessed with intelligence (). I've certainly been given a conscience. That's what I follow and to do that I personally am the sort of person that needs an aim. At the moment my aim would be to increase biodiversity. I'm not trying to play god. Nature will do the hard work. I know it's not really me doing it. But I try to think of appropriate ways to structure the garden that will increase the number of species and the number of any given species.

I have also given some consideration to the history of my garden. On the oldest map I can find my plot was the site of a farm track. What was there? Ponds? Hedgerows? Hard surfaces? Pasture? Some trees that would be coppiced maybe? No pesticides or herbicides would have been used, I know that much. I imagine it was full of life. Of course I can't recreate what was lost in such a small space. But I will manage it as I think best because I have thought about it. I will keep thinking about it and no doubt my ideas will change somewhat. Maybe I'm meddling again. But at least I'm thinking about my actions. And no, I don't always get it right or even think that I do. I can but try.

[wanlock dod]

Hi Debs,

I am in no position to say you are wrong. I have often felt though, that once one begins to mess with natural systems you can get "locked in" to needing to keep messing with them. I suppose that I would say that this is the need for management, but only if there is a particular aim or purpose in mind.

If one created a pond, then I expect that it would require some kind of management for it to continute to do what it was created to do, but if it was just left as an area of ground I think that it could carry on being this without any outside asistance for a very very long time. Thus, I would say that it was only the original management act of creating the pond that caused theer to be any ongoing need for management. Perhaps if left unmanaged it would just turn back to the area of land that it was before the pond was dug.

Would this be a problem? Perhaps only to somebody that wants there to be a pond?

I suppose that ultimately the question is more about whether one wants to have had a hand in producing the end result.

[Deb London]

TBH my idea of a "result" would be one big 'wildwood' surrounded by marsh, estuaries and sea, itself surrounding bogs, fens, rivers etc.. The sheer scale of this landscape might well mean that there are enough natural clearings and other sporadic habitats to form every conceivable sustainable ecosystem and support 'optimal' (whatever that is) biodiversity. I am reading a book that a fellow WABBER kindly gave me and in there is a suggestion that the Garden of Eden was a description of the time before humans "meddled", when truly wild landscapes really did exist, and humans were just one part of this. I'm not saying that I believe that, but I find it an interesting concept.

BUT, rightly or wrongly, we have moved on and I think it would be a strange person who would actually wish to the country to go back to 'wildwood' whilst understanding the actual consequences of this. It's pure fantasy in my mind.

What options are left for the few of us who care about the wildlife that exists on the land we own/rent?

To do nothing and leave your garden be maybe. Unless you have a lot of land, the result is on a miniscule scale - a fraction of an acre maybe. My opinion is that this won't count for much, and truly wild conditions/ecosystems will be severely stunted in this amount of space.

To do a bit, and let nature do the rest. Possibly.

Or go the whole hog. Do as much as you can because you are aware that mankind destroys our fellow species in every other way it can.

Mind you, I'd love it if my immediate neighbours thought like you do, wanlock dod. Just to think, I could have a forest either side of me and manage the clearing in the middle. They could have the quite, silent woodland where things roosted and sheltered. I could have the frogs (hopping), newts (swimming) reptiles (basking) birds (dust-bathing), butterflies (flitting), grasshoppers (singing), dragonflies (hunting) etc, etc, etc.

Bit selfish though.

[Dogghound]

Wildlife management for conservation should really be aimed at a particular ground and a particular outcome. If we left the natural environment as it is you would end up with everywhere wooded. The land has been managed for so long that continual management is required for some species. Lack of management has resulted in species declines. A lot of populations are low or declining so need suitable management unfortunately the wide range of habitats are not the same as they were when these species were abundant.

As an example if you wanted to conserve a large area of reedbed (not a common habitat) for rare breeding birds it would be pointless allowing willow (woodland more common habitat) to encroach across it creating an unsuitable habitat structure. Likewise with ponds the number of ponds has declined massively in Britain over our recent history the way land is managed now (agriculture/irrigation) pond creation no longer occurs naturally (in significance) so creation of ponds can be highly important to groups such as amphibians, birds and invertebrates.

[Dorts]

Does nature do it best? Well, if it's species diversity you're after, then the answer is not always.

Nature creates wonderful natural habitats, but also 'lifeless deserts'. For every square mile of prime rain-forest, there are hundreds of square miles of icy and sandy wastes which along with the majority of our deep oceans, are 'species poor'. Whereas a square metre of well managed ancient chalk grassland, a habitat created inadvertantly by man, contains more species than any similar sized natural habitat on earth with up to 50 species of plants, which in turn supports vast numbers of spiders, grasshoppers, bugs, snails, lacewings, butterflies, flies, bees, wasps, ants, beetles etc, etc, which in turn support many species of birds and mammals.

Take an area of English woodland; left to nature, as many have been since the 1940's, it can soon become a very quiet, rather gloomy place; devoid of the many species you would expect to find in a well 'managed' woodland. The variety of micro-habitats within the woodland will reduce in number and with it the species of plants and animals.

With the wildlife garden, it's diversity of habitats you should aim for if you want a garden rich in species. Dense shrubs for birds to hide and nest in. Flowers that produce plenty of pollen and nectar for as many months of the year as possible. Nest boxes of various types and sizes, for birds, bats and insects. A pile of old logs, a pond, an area of un-mown mixed grasses. Some trees and shrubs that produce plenty of fruit, berries and nuts etc. A good compost heap will produce food for many birds in the form of worms and other creepy things. As many native species of plants that you can accommodate.

The problem in Britain, is that no matter where you are, you will be working with habitats that have for several thousands of years been 'managed' for one purpose or another, and just leaving things to nature does not send that habitat back to a time before man came along. So we have to 'manage' with as much of a mixture of common sense and expert advice as possible.

Don't just leave your garden to to become overgrown with nettles and brambles and say that you are 'leaving it for the wildlife' and expect it to attract a vast array of species, even though it will attract some. This is the lazy way. And as with most lazy projects, you can expect small rewards.
Dorts.

[King Edward]

Originally Posted by Deb London

Mind you, I'd love it if my immediate neighbours thought like you do, wanlock dod. Just to think, I could have a forest either side of me and manage the clearing in the middle. They could have the quite, silent woodland where things roosted and sheltered. I could have the frogs (hopping), newts (swimming) reptiles (basking) birds (dust-bathing), butterflies (flitting), grasshoppers (singing), dragonflies (hunting) etc, etc, etc.

This is a somewhat strange thought. There's lots of life going on in woodlands (or at least, there should be), not just roosting and sheltering, although how much might develop in your neighbours' gardens is another matter.

Regarding the 'wildwood', of course the whole country isn't going to revert to a 'natural' state any time soon. But that's not to say that some parts of it couldn't be rather wilder than they are at the moment.

Also, 'high forest' is not equivalent to 'wildwood'. The former is generally cut for timber sooner or later, has limited amounts of dead wood, few old/very big trees, low canopy height, poor vertical structure, lacks certain specialist species (many of which are now rare/extinct), few windthrown trees and associated small-scale disturbance (e.g. temporary ponds formed from root plate holes, small canopy gaps), lower diversity (at least of woodland specialist species, rather than those open ground species that colonise managed woodland).



Conversely, regarding wildlife gardening, allowing a plot of land to do whatever it wants may (or may not) benefit wildlife, it certainly isn't gardening. Gardens are generally on a much smaller scale than habitats in the wider countryside and are valuable in quite different ways. They also have the potential for ongoing, intensive, personal management. So, while I strongly believe that certain areas of the countryside could be less managed (or, at least, be managed in the direction of returning to self-sustaining ecosystems requiring less intervention on an ongoing basis), I don't think this is the way to go for gardens.

wanlock dod's comment about getting 'locked in' to managing systems is quite right. But, with gardens, we are already very 'locked in'. Abandon the average garden and it won't turn in to what it was before (at any rate, it won't get very far before someone else takes over and stops it). Instead, it'll probably turn into a large bramble/nettle patch with (as Debs says) seedlings of common trees.

Much better to deliberately create good wildlife habitats within the garden, such as good quality ponds, diverse flowering plants, varied vegetation structure, shelter for amphibians etc. etc. The benefits of a pond, for instance, stretches far beyond its edge in the form of enhanced amphibian/insect populations in the surrounding area.

[King Edward]

Reply to Dorts (was meant to be short, but got much too long).

Regarding 'gloomy' woodlands. Wildwood features such as those I listed above take a long time to develop - centuries, rather than a few decades. While I totally agree that active management can be beneficial for particular species, I do think it's very important that at least some areas of woodland (preferably decent sized areas) are protected and managed on the basis that, as time goes on, they will be allowed to develop such features. Ideally, perhaps such 'future wildwood' areas could be interspersed with more actively managed areas, and other high quality habitats such as grasslands, wetlands etc.

Regarding chalk grassland, one square metre may be very diverse but you can hardly compare it with woodland which operates on a larger spatial scale altogether. E.g. this article, which found that a random sample of 640 trees in Borneo lowland rainforest contained an average of 103 tree genera from 42 families (presumably even more species). That's not even getting on to the non-tree species, epiphytes, insects, spiders etc. Use a more reasonable area comparison, perhaps 10 hectares, and the true difference in diversity would be apparent.

Also, short-grazed chalk grassland is pretty 2-dimensional in comparison with the height and canopy extent of a woodland. Unfortunately, having evolved beyond our arboreal past, humans are somewhat short-sighted when it comes to appreciating diversity more than 2m above the ground.

To a lesser extent, the same would be true in British wildwood. Unmanaged (i.e. natural, not just neglected for a few decades) woodlands are very diverse to an extent that doesn't seem to be properly appreciated. With patience, we can restore some of what has been lost (not just individual species, but the habitat as a fully functioning ecosystem).

No-one would suggest chopping down rainforest to benefit biodiversity, so why is it assumed that this is always the correct way to manage woodland? Sometimes it is, but that's much more for the benefit of open ground species rather than the woodland interior specialists.

Finally, consider biomass. A growing woodland gradually accumulates nutrients and energy in wood, much of which get taked away when the woodland is felled/coppiced. Obviously, if they've been taken away unused, they can't support the foodchains that depend on them. Only in an unmanaged woodland, with live and dead wood left in situ, can the ecosystem function properly.

Consider: how would woodland management for conservation differ if butterflies and flowers were inconspicuous and dull, but wood-boring insects and fungi were large and popular? Such differences ought not to matter, but they do.