Wishes for improving botanical conservation in Shropshire Fiona Gomersall Shropshire Wildlife Trust (SWT) started to notice a loss and decline of local wildlife sites (LWS) and wrote his publication, ‘Losing Ground’, on the disappearance and decline of these prime habitats.
I was asked by John Handley to write an article on three things I would want to change over the next 10 years to improve conservation in Shropshire. This is a big ask as what I wish for is complex and tied up with many other situations which need to change. Writing this article under partial lockdown due to Covid-19 though, has brought many of us hope that our isles and indeed the world have an opportunity to bring about radical change to the way we live in order to tackle species loss and climate chaos.
Tragically decline of species and habitats has continued. Living near Bury Ditches from 1995 to 2015, I witnessed locally the drastic decline in lapwing numbers. I also noticed a big increase in road traffic accompanied by the eutrophication and trashing of roadside verges, so that a diversity of quite common species was replaced by a monoculture of False Oat-grass Arrhenatherum elatius and Hogweed Heracleum sphondylium.
I, like many ecologists dream of a return to a more semi-natural Shropshire – the one I thought I was moving to 25 years ago. I thought I understood that the county had one of the less ‘improved’ landscapes in the UK and was naïve to believe this as, like everywhere else, most of Shropshire’s wetlands had already been drained and the unimproved grasslands ploughed, encouraged by Government grants on offer in the 1970s.
We can’t turn back the clock but we can attempt to restore lost habitats, create new and at least hold on to the best sites still existing like the Long Mynd, the Stiperstones and the 700 or so LWS in Shropshire. My three asks are: 1) Strengthen environmental legislation and regulation to protect semi-natural sites. 2) Ensure a fully-functioning Nature Recovery Network throughout Shropshire linking the protected ‘core’ sites - the SSSIs and NNRs. 3) Improve environmental education at all levels of learning.
The decline and loss of species and habitats kickstarted the countywide habitat survey of Shropshire and the publication of the ‘Ecological Flora of the Shropshire Region’, Sinker et al. Later, John Tucker, working as Conservation Officer at
Stapeley Hill – a rich local wildlife site (LWS)
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