Nature Notes

My latest essay for a couple of local publications . . .

One of my New Year resolutions was to do at least one decent walk each week, and the beginning of the New Year therefore saw me striding out across Cannock Chase. I grew up on the edge of the Chase, and always enjoy walking there on my return visits to mid-Staffordshire. This was a cold but crisp and shiny January day, and it seemed to me that half the population of Staffordshire shared my desire for a decent walk.

Cannock Chase represents an important resource for that rather crowded part of England, and is therefore greatly in demand as a local ‘wild space’. Conserving such open spaces is a demanding task, involving balancing the different human usages (I as a walker was annoyed at the many mountain bikers around, for example), but also ensuring that human use does not harm wild creatures or their habitats. Some compromises have to be made, and it is important that all users respect this fact; for one thing, perhaps we have to put up with some parts being busy, like most of the paths I walked that day, so that other areas can be quieter and provide a refuge for shy wild creatures.

Notices here and there warned of the danger of human users of the Chase bringing in or spreading disease. Some of Cannock Chase’s significant plants, for example the bilberry, have suffered from diseases that are easily spread to new areas by unwary hikers, particularly those who do not stick to the paths as they should.

Even in places with a lighter human footprint, conservation requires more than just ‘leaving things be’. Research is constantly continuing to discover what the precise ecologies are that benefit particular species. Perhaps a particular meadow needs to be grazed to stop taller and ranker species crowding out low growing specialities. A shallow pond with a good growth of reeds will benefit species that would not be attracted to a deeper and more open stretch of water, though there are others it would suit. It all needs planning. Nature reserves have to be developed and maintained, and that requires a lot of work, on a continuing basis.

I did find a quieter area to walk in, on the return leg of my circular walk. In one sense it was far from being a quiet place, woodland that in a few weeks will be filled with bluebells, between the busy A513 and the main London railway line, on the edge of the Shugborough estate - but there were few walkers, and in gaps between the ‘noises off’ I could hear chaffinches, parties of tits in the high trees, and the scream of a jay. I was also delighted to find large numbers of red campion flowers along the path I walked - not an early spring bloom for 2012 so much as the remains of 2011 lingering on, and a sign of what, till that point anyway, had been (for all the storms) a remarkably mild winter. I would not have found them on the same walk in January 2011!