Southern block full#
We exit the copse and enter the scrubland again, here we come across a field full of Longhorn cattle. Where there are healthy populations of hornets, the smaller often more irritating, insects are kept in check.
They also carry out the important ecological process of pest control.
Although their sting is painful, like bees, they are unlikely to sting a person unless provoked. Like Common ragwort, hornets are a misunderstood creatures. In addition to this bracket fungus, Tom captures a European hornet that was utilising the same tree’s sap in one of those specially designed bug jars. We see one of the larger woodland trees has Oak bracket (Pseudoinonotus dryadeus) growing near the base of the trunk, presumably taking advantage of some rotting heartwood within the tree. Regardless of the lack of understory in the copse, it isn’t completely lacking in wildlife. On the other hand, here at Knepp, once the trees fall scrub and grasses can recolonise the open areas and provide a more varied habitat in the long term. Sadly many of the woodlands in the UK, even some of the protected ones, now look like this because of high numbers of deer in the countryside. Tom tells us this area was woodland before the wilding project started and it hasn’t responded especially well to the introduction of the livestock and deer. The Southern block of the Knepp estate, West Sussexįurther on we enter a large copse where there has been significant grazing and browsing to the extent that it is seemingly devoid of young trees, scrub or wildflowers and grasses. Yet it only really poses a threat when cut and dried for hay. Tom also tells us how, despite its value for biodiversity, ragwort is a despised plant pulled up from almost wherever it grows in the name of protecting livestock.
In addition, it’s one of the main food plants for the brightly coloured Cinnabar moth, whose yellow and black caterpillars we see below a young ash tree growing up protected by the unpalatable, thorny scrub. Tom takes us through a field of coarse grasses and ragwort, the latter he explains to be vital component of the messy dynamic ecosystem at Knepp as its golden flowers provide an abundance of nectar throughout the summer. Although while entering the jungle of blackthorn, hawthorn and battered dog rose, there is evidence of these animals quite literally below your feet and above your head in the form of invertebrate-infested piles of horse manure and vast gaps through dense hedges, the animals themselves remain out of sight, elusive. Somewhere in this scruffy Serengeti there are Longhorn cattle, Exmoor ponies, Red deer, Roe deer, Fallow deer and ginger Tamworth pigs. Today Tom is taking us on a tour of the southern block of the estate, where a few years after the fields were left fallow, small numbers of traditional livestock were introduced as a kind of large-scale conservation grazing experiment. Most people don’t walk through kilometres of scrubby pasture on a regular basis but Tom Forward does since he is an ecologist at the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, home to an ambitious “wilding” project which has received a large amount of media attention in recent years due to the rare and unusual species turning up.
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