Local landowners, farmers, residents and others gathered at Redmarley village hall (a stone’s throw away from Hardwick Green Meadows) to learn about the importance and value of floodplain meadows and discuss the current status of curlew populations.  We were proud to have four excellent speakers who delivered fascinating presentations.

Emma Rothero, Project Manager from the Floodplain Meadows Partnership, got us underway and we discovered that, for centuries, floodplain meadows were the equivalent of the village petrol pump - hay being the petrol, which fed and fueled the animals that provided food and power. She explained how, over time, different land owners would have had different shaped and sized lots of floodplain meadows; as the population grew, each allocated lot became smaller. The statement below, written by landscape historians Brian and Thompson, sums up the huge importance of floodplain meadows economically and culturally, with specific reference to the Lugg Meadows:

From a Wildlife Trust point of view, we look at the value of these meadows from an ecological and biological standpoint; they can support over 40 different species per square metre. Sadly they are fragmented and in critical decline. Floodplain meadows have many benefits - food for livestock, pollinators and pest control, carbon storage in soils, water supply and filtration, cultural/tourism/recreation/education/knowledge, health and well-being. The current language in government is Natural capital, ie the amount of a natural asset (e.g. soil, air, water etc) and services that arise from the asset (e.g. pollinators/pest control, food etc). 

The Last Call of the Curlew?

It was interesting and encouraging to learn from Mike Smart (Severn Curlew Project Officer on the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust new breeding curlew project) that 60,000 pairs of curlew, a high proportion of the world population, breed in the UK, and about 150,000 breed in northwest Europe and come to winter in the UK. However, curlew numbers are decreasing, mainly because of poor productivity. Curlews are long-lived birds, living up to 30 years, but adults may continue to nest without producing any young. Nesting birds are sensitive to disturbance, especially by dogs, and suffer from predation by foxes, badgers and crows (who no longer have any predators to control their numbers). These factors reduce their productivity and, along with early cutting of hay, are key drivers in the decline of the species.

In 2019 The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust’s headstarting project transferred curlew eggs under licence from East Anglian military sites (where they are a nuisance due to the potential of bird-strike) to WWT's Slimbridge site where they are reared under the expertise of the Conservation Breeding Unit. 50 chicks were released in six cohorts at Slimbridge, all colour-ringed to enable individual identification. Post release monitoring has been ongoing since early July and it will be interesting to see where they turn up.

Roman camp or modern manure heap?

To round off, we heard from Paul Hudson, Outreach Manager from Worcestershire County Council’s Historic Environment Records Explore the Past team. He talked about the research gathered as part of the desk-based assessment carried out at the start of the Hardwick Green Meadows project, adding his own insights into some of the pitfalls and assumptions one can often make from features found in the landscape – could that shape on a LiDAR map be a Roman camp or is it just a modern manure heap?