• Encouraging LPA's to complete reviews of sites within their area;
• Establishing contact with CWS landowners; and
• Developing a habitat management advice service for CWS owners.
If the nature conservation community within Essex is serious about contributing towards
the UK's International and European obligation to halt biodiversity loss by 2010, establishing
and defending a successful CWS system is essential. Site based conservation has largely
failed to stop the decline of commonplace wildlife; habitat fragmentation and degradation
has continued, and sites remain isolated in inhospitable agricultural and urban landscapes.
Adopting a landscape scale approach to nature conservation is now seen as the only way to
restoring a wilder countryside. County Wildlife Sites will provide the foundation for the
creation of wildlife networks and offer an opportunity to work with farmers and landowners
outside of nature reserves and statutory protected sites.
Further thoughts on Elm in the English countryside
David Bloomfield Hortons, Mascalls Lane, South Weald, Brentwood CM14 5L.I
Last summer when the new Elm shoots had reached the end of that season's growth and
the leaves were all fully extended, I used secateurs to cut small branches of three year's
growth complete with leaves. This weighted about 401bs, which I made into two faggots
and put in an airy building. The leaves dried perfectly well and stayed on the twigs.
I then cut about 201bs of one year's twigs, which I put in a paper sack that I lay on its
side with the top open in the same building. The leaves dried perfectly well, but I was
sure a larger heap would have turned into a damp mouldy mess. The faggots I felt could
have been stacked about a dozen high in a covered stack outside. I speak as someone
who has been involved in haymaking since the 1950s.
In mid-February I fed this material to sheep, goats and mature cattle. I first offered the 3
year growth, which all types would to some degree pick up and chew the branch ends to
eat the leaves, taking an inch or two of the twig, the cattle rather more. The sheep and
goats would pick up most of the fallen leaves, the cattle not. I then fed in troughs the one
year growth, which was about 6 inches long. The cattle and goats ate the complete twig,
the sheep not. All types cleared all the fallen leaves in the trough.
I had not harvested growth more than three year's old as the proportion of leaf would
have been small, as leaves are only produced on that year's growth. The bark on the twig
is so dry and held so tightly that no stock is able to separate it, unlike browse which is
cut and fed immediately and the bark is stripped easily.
I was disappointed how long it took to cut this material and how little was produced, the
actual weight of dried leaves much reduced when the water content would have dropped
10
Essex Field Club Newsletter No. 50, May 2006