#261: On the verge - investigating soft estate

Britain's roadside verges are a huge area of the country if they are taken cumulatively. They vary in nature, from areas of scrubland and bramble, to woodland, to wide grassy banks, perhaps planted with flowers, and studded with lighting for important junctions. 

They are also likely to contain huge amounts of litter - some of it indescribable. We care so little about these spaces.

These are described as 'liminal spaces' and they have also been given other names, including "soft estate"

Soft Estate is the term used by the Highways Agency to describe the natural habitats that line our motorways and trunk roads, (some 30,000 hectares of land nationally). 

Whilst roads play a major role in opening up land for housing and economic development, their attendant verges offer a genuine refuge for wildlife and a modern form of wilderness in the midst of intense urbanisation and agro-chemical farming. 

Our road network, the site of some of our most carbon-intensive activity, is flanked by Britain's largest unofficial nature reserve.

Source: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FJ005797%2F1#:~:text=Soft%20Estate%20is%20the%20term,30%2C000%20hectares%20of%20land%20nationally).

Plantlife has a section of its website exploring the management of grasslands by road sides, and there has been much written about the (mis)management of these areas and the fact that Councils are accused of neglecting them. On less busy roads, many communities will have a 'local hero' or two who gives up their spare time to clean up their local area.

National Highways have the job of looking after this significant area of land.

There has recently been a lot of effort made to encourage people to care about them, with a campaign featuring the voices of the animals who are affected.

Check the details of the Lend a Paw campaign. You can see the various visual assets which form part of the scheme here.

The focus is on some key audiences.

The campaign is set to reach all drivers, but the key focus is on:

• families (traveling with children and snacks in the car, with the opportunity to teach values/habits) - 8.1m people (1.3m claimed litterers)
• young drivers (who are inexperienced/overconfident but like to follow social norms) - 6.4m people (1m claimed litterers)
• commercial drivers (driving long journeys and treating lorries as their home/office) - 803k people (406k claimed litterers)

Details on the litter strategy and how to report litter are here.

I would not recommend that these areas are visited by students as they are not safe places.

Google Street View images sometimes show up the litter or issues in areas - particularly after grass or hedge cutting has recently taken place.

One additional story here is the apperarance of fruit trees, which have grown from food waste that has been discarded. This is 

In Iceland some years ago, there was a deliberate campaign to ask for motorists to throw something out of the car window.

Image: Alan Parkinson - verges near Rougham, Norfolk

#209: Plantlife

Plantlife is one of the organisations which will be on the list we will create, identifying websites of groups which may well prove useful for teachers preparing to teach the new specification.

The organisation has the following Mission:

Our mission is to secure a world rich in wild plants and fungi.

Wild plants and fungi underpin the health of our environment. They can help us to resolve the climate, ecological and societal challenges which we face.

Protecting them will lead to a world full of colour, beauty and life while allowing the plants and the animals which depend on them to thrive.

Those teaching the specification might be interested in their strategy document. There are opportunities for schools to get involved in their work.

The Advice and Learning section of the website is worth visiting too.

This includes a learning section to help identify plants and fungi with an illustrated database of plants and fungi which are searchable on a number of criteria.

There is also a Meadows Hub giving advice on how to manage this sort of ecosystem. I have blogged about this separately.

#207: Meadows

This is a concerning statistic.

The Plantlife website has a meadows page which goes into detail on the value of this type of habitat, which has been a victim of intensive farming. Plantlife is trying to protect meadows.

The headline is stark. Since the 1930s, over 97% of wildflower meadows have been lost. Where once thirty species of plants would bloom under your outstretched arms, in most of our fields there are now just six.

But, in the last few years, we have come to appreciate what we’ve lost. The tide is turning and the appetite for creating and restoring meadows - from the smallest garden to the largest fields - is greater than ever.

From storing carbon, to supporting biodiversity, to just enjoying their astonishing beauty, many of us want become meadow makers.

Whether you want to learn more about creating and planting meadows, help on how to keep meadows looking fabulous, or want some advice on starting a local meadows group by adopting a few basic principles, you are in the right place to find out how you can create flower-rich meadows on any scale - from a few square metres in your garden to fields of many hectares.

#139: Lydford Gorge: temperate rainforests

A news report from the BBC explores the UK's few temperate rainforests. I have mentioned Guy Shrubsole's book before - a copy is in my Natural History library and will be featured on the blog as well and in the reading lists we are making.

The story looks at Lydford Gorge in Devon, a place I've visited a few times over the years.

A reminder of the need to protect what we have. There are some particularly rare lichens in the woods, including one in Somerset which is the only known location where it is found.

The article says:

Lichens are a particularly unusual class of organisms found in temperate rainforests.

The plant-like living things are made up of fungi growing in association with other life forms, such as algae. There are more than 2,000 species in Britain and Ireland alone, many of which are found in temperate rainforests,

The horsehair lichen Bryoria smithii is known at only two rainforest sites in Britain and Arthonia thoriana, a rare comma lichen, is not known anywhere else in the world other than at Horner Wood in Somerset. 

Temperate rainforests are made up of oak, birch, ash, pine and hazel woodland, but the ash trees are suffering from ash dieback.