A century of care: Wildlife Trusts mark 100th birthday with woodland project
The site where Norton Wood once thrived is currently a broad expanse of decaying wheat stubble. The ancient woodland was cleared during the Second World War, leaving no visible trace on the surface. This lost woodland survives only in the name of the nearby village, Wood Norton.
However, trees are soon expected to flourish again as the Norfolk Wildlife Trust commemorates its 100th anniversary by acquiring a large tract of farmland to restore it to natural habitat.
The Norfolk Wildlife Trust, the first of The Wildlife Trusts—a national network of 47 independent charities with nearly one million members and 2,600 nature reserves—celebrates its centenary this Friday.
In 1926, a Norwich doctor named Sydney Long initiated the county trusts movement by gathering 12 rs in the George and Dragon pub at Cley in north Norfolk. They purchased nearby marshes for £5,160 at auction, converting 407 acres into a permanent bird sanctuary.
Today, rare bird species continue to thrive at Cley, one of over 60 wildlife sites managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
Its recent £4.6 million acquisition of 136 hectares (336 acres) at Wood Norton signifies a shift in conservation strategy: moving beyond protecting isolated patches of species-rich land to restoring lost habitats and enhancing biodiversity and bioabundance.
Eliot Lyne, chief executive of Norfolk Wildlife Trust, describes Wood Norton as
“one of the most significant habitat creation projects in our 100-year history”.
During a tour of Wood Norton’s tranquil vale of fields, Steve Collin, a nature conservation manager at Norfolk Wildlife Trust, explained:
“Traditionally conservation has been about just protecting the rare. It needed to be done but there’s a growing realisation that many of our more common species are suffering too. Biodiversity and bioabundance are two sides of the same coin. We can’t wait until something is really rare to start looking after it.”
Wildlife is poised to rebound at Wood Norton. Skylarks fill the air with song and will nest undisturbed on the arable fields this year. Roe deer watch from afar, and a Chinese water deer darts from a sallow thicket beside an old pond. Kestrels, badger tracks, and fox scents are present, and soon the fields will bloom with arable weeds providing nectar for insects.
Restoring wildlife on neglected or less productive farmland is vital to reversing the severe national decline in wildlife, according to conservation scientists and environmentally conscious farmers. As Collin stated:
“This wildlife that we are depleting is what looks after us as well.”
The Wildlife Trusts have observed that restoration efforts garner strong support, especially among younger generations, although converting farmland to wilder land is not universally accepted. Critics argue that a country already reliant on food production should not reduce agricultural land.
Collin responded:
“We’re not into taking land out of production where we need it.”Wood Norton’s soils are classified as grade five (with grades one and two being the best for food production).
“These soils are very reliant on artificial fertilisers and chemicals, and the heavy clay requires a lot of diesel to cultivate.”
He further explained that the trust supports neighboring farmers through the developments at Wood Norton: the newly nature-rich land will provide pollinators for crops and natural pest control via predatory beetles. Additionally, retaining more water on the Wood Norton property will reduce both flooding and drought downstream.
The project will also enhance water quality. The purchase was funded in part by £3.8 million from Natural England’s nutrient mitigation scheme, which finances the removal of land from intensive farming near sensitive river catchments to reduce nitrate and phosphate pollution in waterways.
Under this government scheme, the new nature reserve will reduce nutrient pollution in the River Wensum and the Norfolk Broads over a 125-year period, benefiting the wider catchment area.
“We’ll create a bigger, better home for nature,”said Lyne.
“But it will be fantastic for people too. We’re creating a wild place that will capture carbon, allow the land to once again act as a natural floodplain, and one in which residents and visitors can explore, learn and feel connected to nature. This land purchase has also helped unlock local housing development – so as well as creating new homes for wildlife, we’re helping in the effort to provide homes for our communities too.”
The trust’s immediate priority is to restore the canalised Wood Norton beck, which flows into the Wensum, an internationally important chalk stream. The beck itself may also be a chalk stream.
A beaver reintroduction project is underway in the Wensum four miles upstream, but beavers remain controversial in arable landscapes. Consequently, the trust may need to use diggers to create new meanders and install “leaky dams” in the beck. These measures will improve water quality and rapidly expand wetlands, supporting species such as snipe, egrets, fish, amphibians, and dragonflies.
The future management of Wood Norton reflects a further evolution in conservation philosophy: allowing the land to determine its own trajectory.
“We don’t want to go from a human-created arable landscape to a human-created wildlife landscape,”said Collin.
“If you do that you risk trying to force the wrong thing into the wrong place. We’ve got to be agile, and adapt to what the landscape wants to do.”
The concept of restoring “natural processes” has been popularized by rewilding projects such as Knepp Estate in West Sussex. Eventually, herbivores like cattle and ponies may be reintroduced to Wood Norton to maintain a mosaic of open grassland alongside regenerated woodland around Norton Wood.
Collin, who spent two years searching for suitable land for restoration, expressed enthusiasm about Wood Norton’s potential.
“The farming family who owned this land had a respect for it,”he said.
“They kept trees and hedges that many would’ve grubbed out but it was a hard job to make a living out of it. We need places like this and nature-friendly farming – or we’re going to live in a world without wildlife.”
An antidote to gloom
The county Wildlife Trusts began with 12 rs in a pub. Nationally, they now have more than 945,000 members. I am among their growing number of 33,000 volunteers because, like many others, I have found an antidote to global doom and gloom in taking modest action to restore nature in my local area.
Over the past year, my voluntary efforts to assist Norfolk Wildlife Trust in bringing back wildlife have focused on growing oak trees from local acorns and helping schoolchildren do the same. The trees I have nurtured will be planted at Wood Norton and at another new woodland emerging next to Norfolk’s largest ancient woodland, just two miles from Wood Norton.
This year, I am raising funds for Norfolk Wildlife Trust to continue local nature restoration by running the London Marathon with a significant handicap: I will be dressed as the national symbol of the Wildlife Trusts, the oak tree.
My articles may become tomorrow’s fish and chip paper, but one of the oaks I have raised could still be standing in a thousand years. Meanwhile, witnessing wildlife rebound and reclaim land from which it has been absent for decades is deeply joyful and hopeful.
Patrick Barkham is voluntary president of Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
