A conference of wardens
The Glorious Grasslands volunteers were invited to the annual conference of the Cotswold Wardens at the Royal Agricultural University. This is because our project and the wardens are both part of Cotswold Natural Landscape.
The location was splendid. The Royal Ag is a historic college very much modelled along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge, with the old buildings arranged around a quad, and ornate decorations in the halls.
The morning was a series of three talks with a focus on trees. Jill Butler from the ancient tree forum gave an excellent talk on the importance of veteran trees, particularly single standing trees outside the woodland setting.
I had gone their with my friends from the grasslands project, but also met some others there who I vaguely knew from other activities. At lunch we were taken to a very fancy dining hall in the college and served a very delicious hot lunch.
In the afternoon, there was a series of guided walks all around the local area. I elected to do the tour of the Bathurst Estate which was just across the road.
Lord Bathurst gave us a guided tour, but the speakers from this morning were also there so we had a really informative discussion
There’s a lot of challenges to produce income for the estate and balance that with conservation. Plantings in the past have been either intentional single trees in the open parkland, or dense wood for cropping. The main takeaway really was the need to consider what the objectives are for any particular activity.
Most funding is geared towards intensive tree planting to meet carbon sequestration targets, but this is not necessarily helpful for biodiversity as the forest floors are barren. The land cannot also be returned to farming use.
A preferable model would be to create woodland pasture where there are fewer trees per hectare and more wildflowers. This can then be grazed to produce an income for the farmer. We are, however, a long way off from public policy going in this direction.
The oldest tree on the estate is an oak. The girth was measured and according to Jill this puts the tree at somewhere between 280 to 400 years old. This is by comparison with trees in Great Windsor Park for which there are accurate planting records.
