Ancient breed helps restore rare grassland

Konik horses - a prehistoric breed originating from Poland - and wild goats are helping Kent Wildlife Trust and Canterbury City Council restore the semi-natural neutral grasslands at Wraik Hill and Fox’s Cross Bottom Local Nature Reserve, near Whitstable.

With help from Natural England through the Environmental Stewardship Scheme and a new management plan, some large scale scrub removal is now taking place to uncover new areas of grassland for the horses and goats to graze.

Although some scrub is beneficial for rare species such as nightingales, grazing is necessary to prevent the site becoming an impenetrable mass of entangled hawthorn and blackthorn scrub.

Britain has lost many of its flower-rich grasslands to intensive farming. It has been estimated that that between 1934 and 1984 the amount of semi-natural neutral grassland in England and Wales has declined by 97%! Many grasslands have been lost altogether as lack of management has seen them turn into species-poor scrubland.

Emilie Mitchell, Canterbury Area Warden for Kent Wildlife Trust, said: "The Trust and Canterbury City Council are now looking forward to some more scrub removal and careful grazing which will hopefully help see the return of rare and charismatic plants like the green-winged orchid and adder’s tongue fern. It is hoped that over time the site will regain all of its glorious plant species and clouds of butterflies will once again flutter over the slopes of Wraik Hill and Fox’s Cross nature reserves."

 

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