Working with the Wildlife Trust to restore wood pasture for wildlife
Restoring ancient forest
Brankley Pastures is a 60-hectare nature reserve near Barton-under-Needwood in East Staffordshire, owned and managed by Staffordshire Wildlife Trust since 2007. The purchase of the Brankley Pastures site allowed the Trust to combine it with their Oakwood Pastures reserve, which they’d already owned for 10 years. Residing on former arable farmland dominated by wheat production, the nature reserve is an ambitious, long-term conservation project aiming to restore the landscape back to a wildlife-rich mosaic of habitats it once was.
The site was formerly part of the Needwood Forest – a historic 9000-acre landscape, which consisted of a mixture of grassland, ancient woodland, and estate forestry. This distinct blend of scattered trees and grassland, known as wood pasture or parkland, is a unique and often overlooked habitat home to some of the UK’s oldest living trees and diverse flora and fauna. Wood pastures boast a rich cultural heritage in that they have been managed for centuries by humans, usually for the purposes of hunting, grazing, or being enjoyed as grand features of large estates.
However, due to agricultural expansion in the 1800s, the ancient Needwood Forest is today a fraction of what it once was. Deforestation to create space for farmland led to significant losses of wood pasture, leaving behind fragmented pockets of trees, and along with it a steep decline in wildlife species and biodiversity. But with the support of NatureSpace, the Newt Conservation Partnership, and East Staffordshire Council, Staffordshire Wildlife Trust is turning back the clock through habitat restoration to encourage wildlife to return to Brankley Pastures and thrive again.
New habitat for newts
As part of Staffordshire Wildlife Trust’s wood pasture restoration work at Brankley Pastures, the Newt Conservation Partnership began work on-site in March 2022 to create new aquatic habitat for great crested newts. The Partnership created five new breeding ponds, establishing a well-connected network of habitat for great crested newts and other wildlife to use.
The new ponds are fed by clean surface water, guaranteed to remain free from pollution as it flows over grassland in conservation management. Clean water, with low levels of nutrients, will increase the likelihood of the ponds being used for egg-laying by newts as a slower rate of vegetation growth will ensure a wider range of more suitable aquatic plants will establish.
The site is also grazed by a small number of livestock, essential to keep the habitat in good condition. With careful stock management, allowing light grazing around the ponds once newts have finished breeding in late summer, the ponds will remain free from scrub. These open conditions will allow more sunlight in to warm up the pond water to create ideal egg-laying conditions for newts and other amphibians to breed.
The creation of the new ponds has meant that an additional 16 hectares of existing terrestrial habitat has been connected to the ponds in a true landscape-scale approach to habitat creation. This terrestrial habitat at Brankley Pastures – including scrub, species-rich grassland, and hedgerows – is vital for great crested newts who spend most of their life on land over-wintering, migrating, and foraging.
First records of great crested newts
Although great crested newts have been recorded locally in the past, the reserve had no formal records – but this changed when pond monitoring carried out in spring this year (2023) confirmed a population of great crested newts on-site. Breeding smooth newt populations were also confirmed on-site, as well as plentiful aquatic invertebrates.
A win for wildlife in East Staffordshire
Brankley Pastures is the first compensation site in East Staffordshire created by the Newt Conservation Partnership as part of the county’s District Licence Scheme. East Staffordshire joined the scheme in January 2022, alongside councils including Staffordshire County, Staffordshire Moorlands, Newcastle-under-Lyme Stafford, South Staffordshire, Lichfield, and Tamworth. Staffordshire has a high population of great crested newts; and with the ever-increasing need to protect the species from further decline and ensure net gain for biodiversity, the long-term, landscape-scale conservation work funded by the scheme is a welcome initiative for the county.
In June this year (2023), NatureSpace, the Newt Conservation Partnership, and Staffordshire Wildlife Trust were joined by representatives from East Staffordshire Council and surrounding local authorities to visit Brankley Pastures to see first-hand the new ponds created through the District Licence Scheme and celebrate the work being carried out for nature recovery in Staffordshire.
Eric Henderson, Staffs County Council Capital Projects Manager, commented:
“It was great, and rare, to see such a well-thought-out scheme. It shows tremendous long-term commitment to the protection of this endangered species through excellent habitat provision and sensitive land access management.”
Pete Case, Newt Conservation Partnership Project Officer, said:
“We are delighted to be working with Staffordshire Wildlife Trust and look forward to watching how the ponds at Brankley develop to become home to great crested newts and benefit a wide range of other aquatic life.”
Will Sheppard, Senior Conservation Officer at Staffordshire Wildlife Trust, said: “The new ponds are colonising naturally and are still establishing. As the vegetation develops, we hope the newts will use it for egg laying. It was a really nice surprise to find great crested newt already using one of the new ponds, and smooth newt in another.
We’re thrilled to be working with NatureSpace and the Newt Conservation Partnership to improve the biodiversity of this nature reserve and provide additional habitat which will strengthen the local great crested newt population.”
Photo progression below:
