Ecologist taking over MoD to guard skylarks says he has confronted threats and assault | Conservation

The track of the skylark has crammed poets’ hearts for hundreds of years, from Shelley’s “blithe spirit” to Wordsworth’s “ethereal minstrel”. However there may be little that’s poetic a couple of row over the birds that has blown up in Colchester.

Campaigners searching for to save lots of Middlewick Ranges, a former Ministry of Defence firing vary in Essex, are livid that among the 76 hectares of uncommon grassland have been mowed final month, an act that they consider has killed skylarks and their chicks, which nest on the bottom.

When Martin Pugh, an ecologist at Essex Wildlife Belief and a member of the Save the Wick marketing campaign group, challenged a tractor driver mowing the grassland final month, he was chased away by a member of safety employees and video footage appeared to indicate him being assaulted.

The MoD plans to promote Middlewick Ranges and 1,000 new houses are anticipated to be constructed, however there was an extended marketing campaign to save lots of the location, identified regionally because the Wick. Final week, charities together with Buglife, Butterfly Conservation, Essex Wildlife Belief and Colchester Pure Historical past Society wrote to Pure England asking it to designate it as a web site of particular scientific curiosity.

The location consists of uncommon acid grassland, which the charities say is house to twenty species of birds of conservation concern on the purple and amber listing, together with nightingales, in addition to protected barbastelle bats and almost 1,500 invertebrates, together with 167 species of concern.

The MoD has beforehand mentioned that 63% of the land will likely be reserved as inexperienced open house. Within the meantime, a spokesperson mentioned, the grassland wanted to be maintained, because it introduced a threat of wildfire within the dry summer season months, threatening homes close to the location.

Skylarks breed between April and August, in accordance with the RSPB, they usually nest on the bottom. Since males don’t perch in timber, they sing to draw a mate whereas flying, and generally hover and dart by the air – the behaviour that impressed Shelley and Wordsworth.

So when Pugh found on 1 July that the grassland was being mown, he went there to attempt to cease it. Video taken by Pugh reveals him speaking to a person who recognized himself as being answerable for safety within the space for Landmarc, an MoD contractor.

Pugh tells the person, who’s sitting in a purple Toyota pickup truck, that the boys can be committing a wildlife crime if the tractor operator carried on mowing. Because the tractor begins shifting, Pugh may be heard saying: “If he’s carrying on, there’s an issue. I’m phoning the police proper now.”

The footage then reveals him operating away because the safety man chases him, saying “you’re getting on my nerves now – get away from right here”, then lunging at Pugh, saying “You’re like Cease Oil”. Then, as the person approaches Pugh once more on the sting of the sector, the digital camera is dropped and he may be heard telling Pugh “you’re trespassing”, whereas Pugh repeats “you’re assaulting me”.

Pugh mentioned: “Inside three minutes of speaking to him, in a really measured, civil means, he had assaulted me and bodily chucked me off the location. Wrestled me off the web site.”

Essex police arrived and Pugh mentioned that its officers advised the boys to cease mowing. On 11 July, the mowers returned. This time, police advised Pugh he could possibly be arrested if he tried to cease the tractor.

Later, he and different campaigners have been advised that mowing wouldn’t be an offence beneath the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 as a result of police didn’t consider birds have been being deliberately killed or injured birds. The employees had checked the areas the place they have been mowing by strolling by the fields, officers mentioned, and had set the mower blades to 4 inches above the bottom to keep away from damaging nests.

Additional video footage reveals the mowers saying the grassland had been minimize every year for 20 years they usually had by no means seen any skylarks.

“As they have been reducing the location, there was a skylark hovering over the tractors,” Pugh mentioned.

On 21 July, the ecologist’s colleagues shot footage of a skylark on grassland mown the identical day “with bugs in her invoice, searching for a nest, wanting distressed”, he mentioned. “That’s the form of factor that has acquired individuals very, very indignant.”

An Essex police spokesperson mentioned: “We have been known as to reviews of an assault at Middlewick Ranges in Abbots Highway on 1 July. A person sustained an harm to his arm within the incident. Our investigation is ongoing.”

The power mentioned that, “primarily based on present proof”, the MoD had not dedicated a wildlife offence. “We’ve got suggested the MoD, as we do any landowner the place such a allegation has been made.

“We’ve got suggested this group of involved residents to talk on to the MoD concerning their issues over ground-nesting birds.”

A Landmarc spokesperson mentioned: “We’re conscious of a video circulating on social media exhibiting an altercation between certainly one of our workers and a campaigner on tenanted land at Middlewick Ranges. We’re taking this matter very severely and conducting an intensive inside investigation. Consequently, we’re unable to remark additional whereas this investigation is ongoing.”

The MoD mentioned: “Middlewick Ranges is surplus Ministry of Defence land and, having undertaken surveys over a three-year interval, we’re planning to promote the location to ship the very best worth for the taxpayer.”