BY ALEC SWAN
There is a peculiar frustration known only to those who love the British countryside: the sight of three different conservationists offering three contradictory solutions to the same patch of land. You see it everywhere, from the Peaks to the Broads. But here, in a quiet corner of Norfolk, drawn from the pragmatic wisdom of a wildlife conservation trust, I have found a post that offers a refreshing dose of common sense.
It is a premise that accepts, indeed encourages, the ancient practice of ovine grazing as a tool to assist in keeping our heather-covered ground as it was—and, however precarious, as it still is.
The logic is as old as the hills, yet it feels revolutionary in our era of high-tech intervention. Our Wildlife Trusts, where they are fortunate enough to have heather-covered ground within their remit, are fully supportive of maintaining these environments. The trouble is that “maintenance” often gets lost in a thicket of policy. Heather, that glorious purple carpet that defines so much of our aesthetic imagination, appears on both heathland and moor. The only difference that I can see between the two is that our gentle East Anglian heathlands do not support Grouse Shooting. Without the financial muscle of the shooting estates, our lowland heaths have been left to silence—and to scrub.
I do wish that the conservationists would form a coherent and constant approach. One year they tell us to leave it alone; the next they warn of wildfire risks. But here in Norfolk, a quiet revolution has been underway since 1999, and it walks on four legs.
Traditional Norfolk lowland heathland has been disappearing at an alarming rate. The cause is not some new plague, but rather the cessation of a very old partnership. Largely due to changing farming practices, animals are no longer commonly grazed on heaths. The consequence is predictable: the heathers and fine grasses are being suffocated by more aggressive vegetation—bracken, bramble, and scrubby birch. Without the constant nibbling and trampling of livestock, the land eventually turns into secondary woodland. Hence the expansive, big-skied views for which Norfolk is especially famous are gradually disappearing behind a wall of green.
This is not a romantic lament for lost views; it is an ecological crisis for the species that live only in the lowland heath. When the heather vanishes, so too do the nightjars, the stonechats, and the silver-studded blue butterflies.
At Kelling Heath, however, they have found their warden-in-chief. Walking the undulating paths near the north coast, you will encounter them: a flock of Welsh Mountain Sheep. They are sturdy, intelligent, and relentless. They are used here to help wage war on the ever-encroaching scrub and tree growth. It is a subtle war, fought not with chainsaws and herbicides, but with grazing pressure. The sheep do not bulldoze the landscape; they sculpt it. They take the young saplings before they become tyrants. They break up the dense molinia grass that acts as a fire ladder. In doing so, they let the light back down to the dormant heather seeds waiting in the soil.
The journey of this environmentally sensitive land restoration started in 1999, when a flock of Hebridean Sheep were introduced to the Park to help manage the heathland. The Hebrideans are primitive, hardy, and have a taste for the tough stuff—they will eat what a modern commercial sheep ignores. More recently, the Welsh Mountain flock has joined the fight. These are not docile lowland breeds; they are agile, alert, and perfectly suited to the sandy slopes and acid soils of the Norfolk heaths.
Watching them work is to witness the correction of a historical mistake. For millennia, this land was kept open by grazing animals—first wild herbivores, then the livestock of commoners. When that stopped fifty years ago, the countryside began to yawn and close over. The heath became a ticking tinderbox of dry scrub.
There is a lesson here for the squirearchy and the conservation bodies alike. You cannot mimic the complexity of a sheep’s tooth with a mechanical flail. You cannot replicate the selective grazing of a flock with a volunteer strimming party. The sheep work cheaply, happily, and efficiently. They ask only for good husbandry in return.
So here is my plea to the fragmented world of wildlife management: look to Norfolk. Look to Kelling. The coherent and constant approach we need has not been invented in a university lab; it has been preserved in the DNA of a flock of Welsh Mountain sheep. If we are to save our heather, we must unchain the grazers. Let the sheep sing. Let the heather breathe.
Alec Swan is a Norfolk-based countryman.