Boggy home for wildlife

The wetlands are rich in plant life

The Brue Valley Living Landscapes project involves getting landowners to make larger parts of the countryside more wildlife friendly and sustainable.

David Leach, Brue Valley Landscapes Project Manager for Somerset Wildlife Trust said: "For a long time nature conservationists have worked by finding out where the good bits of land are for wildlife and try to either buy them so we could manage them ourselves or put some sort of designation on them.

"Now that climate change has come we've got a bit of a problem - these small pieces of land that wildlife relies on them is actually isolated.

"What we are trying to do is create a landscape that wildlife can move through and as the landscape changes through climate change, wildlife can move between sites and across land to survive."

The charity's project area is about 12,500 hectares, with up to 500 landowners across that area - so it is a big task in getting landowners on board with the idea as well as help them get the government funding in place to make the necessary changes.

'Summer grazing'

Although none have signed up to the deal yet, there is some interest from local farmers, like David Banwell from Wedmore.

He has farmed all his life and owns about 200 acres of wet grassland on the outskirts of the village.

A lovely smelling plant - the marsh mint

"This land is for summer grazing. We bring animals here from about May until November and then it's too cold and it gets flooded later on so it's just summer grazing land.

"This is drained by the pump station which is just to our left, it always has been drained for a couple of hundred years but as the conservation has come along, now they're bringing to raise the water level so that birds can have a better life," said David.

Although he hasn't signed up yet, Mr. Banwell could well join the scheme and has already made compromises to the way he farms to accommodate wildlife:

"You have to have less stock than you would have but to intensify out here would be quite expensive and also it wouldn't have any great benefit. Really to us we just use it to our best advantage we can find and just use it with the rest of the farm and do it that way."

'Produce food'

Somerset Wildlife Trust is hopeful that farmers will be willing to make small changes to how they manage their land even though there has been resistance in the past.

"We've all got to understand that farms are running businesses and they see their main priority as producing food. What we're looking to do is compromise so the farmer receives some money for providing good land for wildlife but also manage to produce some produce at the same time.

"Most farmers are willing to compromise to some extent, but the question is where they're willing to compromise. All farmers are different, some will be very enthusiastic, some will be less so.

"I think conservationists and farmers have started to realise that they have a lot of common interest and if we can work in the areas where we have common interests I'm pretty confident we can get quite a lot of success," said David.

David Banwell farms in Wedmore

The land which Mr. Banwell owns is already rich in wildlife in snipe and as well as wetland plants like lesser spearwort and marsh marigold.

"His land is already very good for wildlife and we're hoping we can continue managing it in a way that's good for wildlife. At some point we're hoping to help David with whichever grant scheme he wants.

"However the farmers we're targeting are David Banwell's neighbours and people who own land next to these really good sites and we will be trying to spread the good habitat out into areas where it is possibly not so good."