Farmer Focus: Sheep removal lost heft and left fire damage
Joe Mault © Richard Stanton I live 250m from the edge of a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), the Llantysilio mountain range. It was designated as an SSSI in 1991 primarily for ground-nesting birds – black grouse and curlews.
I remember as a child, my Taid (grandfather) pointing out the black grouse as we gathered on the mountain. My eyes were untrained, and found it hard to distinguish them from magpies.
Interestingly, my Taid and father always pointed out that the curlew never nested on the SSSI hill, but down in the silage fields in the valley.
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That’s the issue with these designations. The “experts” who draw the boundaries behind a desk often don’t understand what is happening on the ground; they can’t be everywhere.
Following the designation in 1991, you would have expected the numbers of birds to soar. No. In fact, if I took my own daughter up to the same spot my Taid showed me the black grouse, I would not be able to show her anything.
From our point of view, the only thing that has changed is “experts” telling us to remove sheep in the early 1990s.
Now, our mountain is undergrazed, fern is overtaking everything and what heather is there has become woody and overgrown. No longer is there an environment for ground-nesting birds.
Due to the issues caused by the SSSI designation, the overgrown mountain is now a fire risk, as seen in the summer of 2018. That year we saw 290ha (716 acres) burned and destroyed.
Now we have the return of “experts” employing contractors to carve out fire breaks across the landscape.
These look like hideous scars and, in an area of outstanding natural beauty (another designation), you would have thought it wouldn’t be allowed.
Formerly, sheep would have created a mosaic of different heights of heather to allow for nesting birds and reduce fire risk, but the damage is done.
Sheep can’t simply return to the mountain in the numbers previously seen, as there is now a lack of food – and we have lost the heft.
I wonder if the scientists would find more wildlife today if they had just left the mountain to the farmers to manage.