(upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Hello and welcome to Country Stride, the podcast dedicated to the landscape's people and heritage of Cumbria and the Lake District. I'm here today in my back garden. We've got a lovely view over brown crags, I think Mark will tell me on Helvelian ahead of us and behind us. Skitter, looking rather lovely. So we're here. It's not where we'll be walking, but we'll say hello, first of all, to author and illustrator, Mark, which is hello, Mark. Hello, Mark. Hello, Dave. It's a lovely setting. The sun's on our face, the breeze is with us. The scapiness is out in the past, you're here. It's a bit breezy for the pollinators to be out, I think. But the reason we're here, and the reason that the walk we're doing on today's podcast is not here, is that you were away, Mark. You had a rare break, so I took on the reins. You do. I wasn't walking from Lands End. I had a three or four day trip down to Hampshire to see my grandson's year six end of term play. He's such a theatrical young lad. We had to be there. Theatrix related to you, who would have thought it? Okay, so you went away and I took the opportunity, a really rare opportunity, to grab hold of somebody who was up here in the lakes. She's actually normally based down in the southwest. She has worked in Kumbria before. She's one of the world's leading experts on lichens. But she also has a great passion for the Atlantic rainforests. These are the temperate rainforests that we find particularly in Borodale, but there's other little patches, Cascadale, the Rosalind Woods gorgeous down there. This is the subject of today, Mark, because in May of this year, a large area of Borodale was designated as a new national nature reserve. This was part of the King's series of national nature reserves. And in all 721 hectares, that's 1,782 acres of Borodale were designated for these very rare and remarkable woodlands. You've got the craggy areas and the slopes running down into the valley. All cohesively part of the magic of the whole Borodale scene. Without the trees, Borodale would be a barren place. Arguably, you could say this is the lakes really, and it's kind of pristine condition, isn't it? There is a continuity of woodland there, which is unusual in the Lake District, very unusual in this country. So what we're going to do, we're going to go and meet April Windall. Now, rather annoyingly, and it might have been because you weren't there, Mark, I actually forgot to record the very earliest bit of our chat. Oh, God. So we don't have April introducing herself, so I will introduce April as one of the UK's leading lichenologists. She's chair of the education part of the British Lichen Society. She adores Cumbria and the Lake District. Who doesn't? Absolutely. And Borodale is just the heart and soul of the area spot on. And I'll tell you what, I'll hand over to you now, Mark, then, to describe where we're setting off from. I believe you were starting at Sea Tola, which is where we started with Pete Martin to look at lichen. But this story makes a more cohesive expression of what it was all about, what we were actually seeing in microcosm on the Cajunwood Pete. So what we did, Mark, is we left the car park at Sea Tola. We didn't hang around there like we did with Pete. We walked down the road towards Sea Twaite, but almost immediately we broke up into the woods, which I think is that the common there? You know, it leads up onto the Sea Tola common above the intake wall, but it's all that slope, that impeasurable slope that people never walk in. Thank goodness they don't, because it's such a rich and diverse environment, and I think that's what April gets the grips with. That's right, yeah, it's an incredible place, and we go on to visit three very different kinds of these borrowed ale woodland. As far as you and I go, Mark, we will catch up at the end of the podcast. [Music] [Music] Well, we've walked uphill a little way. We're standing, interestingly, by what looks to be a reclaimed quarry site, possibly dry stone wall, burrow pit. It's got the remnants of what looks like a little bothy in there, a reminder that it is an industrial landscape, of course. But we're in this temperate rainforest here, April. Can you paint a word picture of where we're standing, what we can see, and what defines this kind of landscape? We're in the north-eastern end of this woodland at the moment, so naturally we have relatively low light levels. It's quite shaded and it's very, very humid, and those conditions are absolutely perfect for the development of mosses and lichens, which you can see all around us clinging onto the rocks and the boulders and the outcrops as well. You have this fantastic closed canopy overhead with a river that is carving through the landscape. So not only do you have really high rainfall climatically, but you've got the localized humidity from the river that is locking in and retaining the moisture. And that is why wherever you turn in these woodlands, it is supporting a luxuriance of life. If you look in the better areas, so on these trees over here, for example, you can see that there is a really rich tapestry of lichens. You've got greens, you've got whites, and if you have an available surface, you can guarantee that life is going to colonize very, very quickly, be that the bear bark of the trees, be that the rock faces, like what we have here. And it is this life, the lichens, the mosses, and the liverworts that truly characterize these woodland habitats. We're also seeing quite a lot of deadwood around the place. Huge amounts of deadwood from the dead stumps to the fallen branches, the twigs that are all scattered on the ground. There is so much diversity within these woodlands. Can you define some terms for us? When people talk about Atlantic rainforests, or temperate rainforests, what are we actually talking about, and what are the climatic conditions that allow this kind of ecosystem to develop? So when we talk about temperate rainforests, we are talking about woodlands that are tucked up along the western seaboard of Britain and Ireland, because this region and this sway of the country is what has the perfect climatic conditions for these woodlands to thrive. Climatically, what these woodlands need is the rain, of course, in our beloved rainforests, so they get an inordinate amount of rain. Seathway Farm, just down the road, is the wettest place in England, and it gets, on average, about 3000mm of rain per year, so huge amounts. But what's really important is how this rain is distributed over the course of the year. You don't really get a seasonality like you get over in the east of the country, or like we have down in the southwest. It rains all year round, and there are a high number of rainy days per year. The rain is really important, but this is coupled with temperatures. So we have, on the west, we have a really mild climate, and the temperature remains relatively constant over the course of the year. You don't, again, have these huge temperature fluctuations and seasonality like you get in other parts of the country. The temperature, and the rainfall, is what shapes and creates these woodlands. And these woodlands are incredibly rare. Within Britain and Ireland, these woodlands are restricted to the western coast, where the climate is suitable. And it's estimated temperate rainforests cover less than 1% of the land surface mass across the aisles. But just putting this into a bigger and more global picture, the temperate rainforests that we have here are linked with other temperate rainforest habitats that you find in places like the North West Pacific, and places like New Zealand as well. There are some lovely pockets elsewhere in Britain, particularly the North Devon coast. There are some beautiful bits there, desirard, point areas like that. Snowdonia, I think, has got some really fabulous pockets. Can you just talk a little bit about them, and then put Borudale into that bigger picture? When we talk about the western woodlands in Britain and Ireland, we refer to these as Atlantic woodlands. These Atlantic woodlands need to be seen as a series of different woodland types that stem from western Scotland down to the southwest of England and all along western Ireland as well. Now, climatically, these woodlands are subject to different conditions. So down in the southwest, for example, we have still high amounts of rainfall, but temperature-wise, you see the massive temperature variations from the summer to the winter months, and you also get that with rainfall as well. So down in the southwest, we're more characteristic of these southern oceanic woodlands, which support a completely different lichen and bryophyte flora in comparison to what you get with the temperate rainforest. Just to put Borudale into a national context, it is of great conservation significance. And there are species of lichens and bryophytes found within this woodland complex that are not found anywhere else in the country. So we're looking at an old quarry here, quite small, recovered by nature. But this is important, isn't it, April? Because a lot of these sites that we think have an uninterrupted historic route way back the Wildwood effectively have been used throughout history. Absolutely, Dave. So when people think of temperate rainforest in Britain and Ireland, they think of really wild, untouched, pristine woodland. And don't get me wrong, in certain places, that's certainly the case. You know, if you look up on the fells, you've got the really dramatic and craggy terrain where no human could ever access. So they likely are remnants of the Wildwood, the woodlands that started appearing after the last ice age. But for the majority, these woodlands have been worked, they've been managed and they've been shaped by man across generations. And I think that's really important to acknowledge because some of the best sites that we have here are those that have been actively and sensitively farmed for hundreds of years. Can you just describe as well what we can see here? I mean, we can barely see the rock. These rock faces are absolutely incredible, and there is this green tapestry across all of the boulders here in front of me. This is comprised of a series of common mosses that you find in huge abundance within these woodlands. So things like the Greater Shaggy Moss, right to the Adolphus Laureus. You've got Thwydium Tamarissainum, the Tamariss moss, isothethium, myosoroidis. There's a word, I think, isn't there, for when plants grow on plants growing on plants? Yeah, there is. We call those plants epiphytes or epiphytic plants. And exactly what you've just said, it's a plant that grows on a plant that grows on a plant like this tree here. You've got the tree with the mosses growing on the tree, with the lichens growing on the mosses that are growing on the tree. And these are what we refer to as epiphytes, and they are so characteristic of these woodland habitats. Brilliant. Well, we're going to go and find some rare species now. We're going to go up and find a gill hidden away amongst the trees on the hillside here. We've walked about half a mile through the woods and up hill still, steadily uphill. We've got some great views now across the valley to Roswaite Fell, Roswaite Cam up there. And we've come, you can probably hear it in the background, so a little spot beside a back tumbling down through the woods here. This is characteristic, isn't it, this back April? There's a few of them that come on down through these heights. It's the case across the entirety of the Lake District, to be honest, Dave, because when you get water courses like this cutting through these woodlands, it creates this localised humidity and it allows all of the plant life, the lichens, the bryophytes to really flourish and really thrive. And you probably noticed just from walking that the character and the feel of the woodland has really changed, and it's a result of the conditions that are being created by this stream. Can you talk to us about that change? I mean, it seems to me more dense, it's much greener. The bracken hasn't colonised here in the same way. What else are you seeing here? The change in tree species diversity, really. What we were seeing at the other end of the woodland was an oak-dominated canopy with virtually no understory whatsoever, and we still have oak as the dominant here, but we've got things like hazel, we've got trees like holly coming in, and having a diversity of trees is really important for the resilience of the woodland. The type of oak here, it's a Cecil oak, isn't it? That's right, yep, and Borodel is renowned for being the largest block of upland Cecil oakwood that we have here in northern England, so it's about a 14-kilometre stretch, which is so impressive in terms of extent and continuity. Coupled with that, we do have other significant woodland types, and it's important to give those recognitions as well. I think we're going to go and see this hazelwood in a bit, aren't we? You've mentioned some of the other species that we can see here immediately around us, but what are the main species of tree would you expect to see in an Atlantic rainforest in Cumbria? For the most of it, it will be Cessile oak, but you get other trees such as ash, you get lime, you get sycamore, which is a really important tree species, especially in the light of ash dieback, you'll get horse chestnut, your sub-canopy trees, you'll get things like hazel, you'll get holly, small leave lime. Juniper? You do get juniper across the landscape, but you tend to find that in more open conditions, you wouldn't necessarily find it in a closed canopy situation. Alongside the trees then, and often on top of the trees, are these other many species that we've hinted at already, so your mosses, your lichens, your bryophytes. Can you very briefly just give us a definition of terms? What do we mean by this plant life that grows on rocks on other plants? So, I have given a lot of mention already to lichens and bryophytes, and people are probably wondering what the relationship is between these lifeforms and temperate rainforests. Now, lichens and bryophytes, I feel, are the key and defining features of these habitats, and the reason for that is they have a really distinct shift in their distribution going from east to west as a result of the high rainfall and the temperature. And you don't necessarily see this with any other wildlife groups, so you don't get this distribution shift with trees, you don't get it with invertebrates, you don't get it with wildflowers. So, the lichens, bryophytes and ferns are the defining features of these habitats. What are they? I hear you scream. So, lichens, although they look like plants, lichens are a fungus, they sit within the biological kingdom fungi. They're a really special type of fungus because what they do is they partner up with either an algae or a photosynthetic bacteria, which we call a cyanobacteria, and only when all of these different lifeforms come together and interact with one another, do you get the formation of a lichen? Keen listeners will remember Pete Martin, we came not so far away from here with him and dedicated a whole episode actually to lichens, which is fascinating, but talk to us about mosses next. Mosses and liverworts, so all this green tapestry which we have around us, these sit under the umbrella which we call bryophytes, and what bryophytes are are non-vascular plants. So, they're plants which don't have a true root system and they don't have the structure of phloem and xylem to transport water, nutrients and minerals around the body of the bryophyte. The mosses and liverworts are essentially like a sponge. That's why they often sit with lichens because lichens are the same. They are like a sponge to the environment and they absorb absolutely everything. It does get quite technical, doesn't it? Effectively, they live on the surface. I remember one of the things that Pete said is that they're not taking anything from the trees. Their interaction is with the air, it's with the sunlight, isn't it? The lichens and the bryophytes have no dependency on the surface in which they're growing apart from attachment. These lifeforms are a self-contained unit. They are both photosynthetic organisms so they create their own food from the sunshine or sunshine eating lifeforms as we call them. And they absorb all the nutrients and minerals and the water that they need from the surrounding environments. But this is why they're such good indicators of the habitat in which they're growing because what they can't differentiate between is the necessities that they need for survival and things like toxins and pollution. So a healthy environment will be reflected in a healthy diversity and community of lichens and bryophytes. I know there's been some surveys in this valley and you've looked at the sheer number of this plant life. Can you just talk to us about some of the incredible numbers we're talking about? This valley is like a biological mecca. It is so famous for lichenologists and bryologists to come and visit and record because the things you see here you just don't really get anywhere else so it's really, really special. We're in a triple SI at the minute so a site of special scientific interest and a few years ago back in 2016 a friend and colleague of mine did the condition assessment for the site. And just within that survey alone which was over a few days they recorded a 160 species of mosses and liverworts which is huge. Just this morning I looked at the national database that we have for lichens and again did a data search for the triple SI and there was over 260 species of lichen. So when people ask you know what is the point of these species why do we pay them so much attention and it's because they contribute so significantly to the overarching biodiversity of the site. You were saying on this valley site here on this wooded valley site could be anything up to 400 species of various plant life. Probably over 400 species of lichens and bryophytes so that isn't taking into account the ferns, that isn't taking into account the wildflowers or the trees. Really exciting okay now they come to this little spot because you say there's something really special here and I'm making a special effort not to stand on it. Talk to us about what we can see down here and describe it first of all one where it's located April. These streams are comprised of small rocky boulders and stones with water flowing down off the mountains. This moisture has resulted in a luxuriant development of this particular species which we call radula voluta. And Borodale as a woodland complex is the only site in England to support this species. Radula voluta is what we refer to as a scale work so it's one of our liverworks that we have here in this woodland. When you come into these places scale matters we really need to zoom all the way down and then there's this whole other world here. If you take a top down approach in these woodlands Dave you are going to miss so much. For me personally it's about going up close personal very intimate with these habitats and taking a bottom up approach. You've also mentioned a beautifully named lichen on an oak tree that we've just passed. Yeah so it's called tumbling kittens or the Latin is hyperchiciner Taylorensis and this is one of our oceanic species of lichen so it's tucked right up against the west of Britain and Ireland where you have the high rainfall. You won't find it outside of these woodlands and in the textbooks it's referred to crashing waves against the sea shore where the surface of the lichen has this undulating appearance to it. Absolutely beautiful and I don't think that was one of the ones we discovered with peat. There we go crashing wave shore and tumbling kittens. Brilliant we're going to walk a little bit further. We've walked another half mile perhaps a mile up the valley seat weight up the upper don't and we're standing beside a beautiful old you tree there. We're looking across the valley now across the meadows the pastures few herdwicks grazing and some limousine cattle on the far banks there. We're looking out across lost weight fell again and the rising flanks of glara mara but on this side so we're kind of below the the wood mines where we came with Mark Hatton all those months ago. We're looking up at well turned to April now we're looking at some some ashes but some very special ashes. I must say that this is actually my favourite place in the county. I absolutely love and adore and completely cherish this part of the the national park and the reason for this is this spectacular habitat that we have here in front of us. And these are the the ash pastures of Borodale and for as far as the eye can see along this valley you have these amazingly stunted gnarled very quirky ash trees. Now these ashes are known locally in a cambrian context as the cropping ashes and they are ash pollards and what I mean by that the management practice of pollarding is where you cut the crown and you cut the branches. And by doing so this increases the density of the canopy and that wood that is then produced can be used for building material and it can also be used for livestock fodder. But this management practice has had huge benefits for the biodiversity that these trees support because by cropping the tree to two to three metres so deer can't eat the leaves. You're reducing the centre of gravity which increases the stability of the tree which allows these pollarded ashes to live so much longer than a maiden tree. So some of these ashes we have here in front of us are up to probably 400 years old but a maiden ash tree will probably only live to about 250 years. And this long continuity of these trees and this landscape is what has resulted in a lichen hotspot for our rainforest indicators. Okay so as you said they're cropped about two metres above the ground aren't they? And what's amazing here and really unique I think is we're used to seeing these kind of ashes in pasture. In boundary fences you would find them as you say cut historically often for gate stoops but certainly for fodder during the winter months are very mineral rich aren't they the barks. But here it's going all the way up the hillside really unusual I mean I don't know what the kind of historic reason for that would be necessarily. Are you related to the wood mines? No idea I don't think we could tell but they're going up what? 200 feet up the hillside here April. Yeah absolutely and I've been so fortunate to work and study across various wooded habitats like this in Britain and in Ireland and I've never seen anything like this. For me these are a real Cambrian specialty these ashpollards especially to this extent across the valley. We should say actually we're out with Tom McNally the great photographer who's going to be speaking in a future country-strud event. And he asked a really interesting question earlier on which I'll put you now because we're looking at a hillside of Bracken really it's taken over I'd say here but you were saying actually no worries that's not a problem in terms of regeneration. When I've done surveys, woodland surveys in the past I've never come across Bracken as being an issue with stopping natural regeneration especially of oak. You get enough light penetrate through the Bracken to allow natural oak regeneration and the other thing that people get concerned about is its impacts on woodland flora. And again the woodland flora normally comes up in the spring way before the Bracken so yeah I don't normally see Bracken as an issue in my experience anyway. Right we're looking further up the hills now so I'd say we're going to what three 400 feet and there's a very very rare woodland habitat out there talk to us about that. Yes there is there is another really important woodland habitat that we have here in this valley and it is a beautiful example of Atlantic hazelwood. We've climbed up I'd say 200 feet possibly maybe a hundred feet from the Derwent and I'm going to probably hear the earthquakes in the background there. But we've come up to a different area of the woodland where it has radically changed to be honest and particularly noticeable is a much denser understory so I've got kind of ferns and all kinds of things that I can't really name. It's only a lot of Bramble. Over to you April what are we looking at here it is completely different it's much denser there seems to be less light around. This feels much more like a rainforest to me. We are now in an area a very beautiful area of Atlantic hazelwood and the reason it feels so different to the oakwood that we've been in and the ash pastures is because the main dominant canopy species is hazelwood. Now this is really unusual because hazel is normally an understory species but if you look above all of the canopies of the different stands are touching. We are underneath the hazel canopy and you're absolutely right light levels have reduced and that's because of the density of the leaves and it's just got such a different feel to it. I always think these hazelwoods are very magical and very enchanted and just looking at the ground flora there's all sorts going on but particularly with the bryphites over growing the rocks the boulders and the small stones and this is a result of the more shaded conditions and the humidity that is locked in by these hazel canopies. Okay let's just talk about the brambles briefly I'm always kind of slightly heartened when I see brambles in an understory because I think it's giving saplings a chance to grab a hold but you're not too keen. Very rarely have I ever seen things like oak regeneration underneath areas of dense Bramble. It normally forms incredible amounts of shade you normally get it in parkland situations now we've just traversed across this whole valley and this is the first time that we have seen Bramble establishing and this will be reflected of the grazing levels. And in this area is very unstable underfoot it's quite precipitous so the sheep and deer are unlikely to get to these areas and as a result of reduced grazing you've got the brambles shooting up and actually in a woodland like this of such high conservation importance. This bramble is really unfavourable because not only will it stop the hazel regenerating in this area it's also going to overshade the lichens that are growing on the hazel and the bryphites that are occupying these rock faces. We'll come back to talk about some management in a little while April but talk to us very briefly about the hazel here so what I'm looking at immediately in front of me here is I don't know how to describe it I mean it looks coppest because you've got eight, ten trunks coming out of the ground but you don't think there's been any historic copying so this is a natural process. Hazel in its natural state is a multi-stemmed tree if you look at these hazel stands around us you have a series of small diameter stems which are complemented by medium and also large diameter stems. So these trees are self perpetuating the stems come up they mature they split and then young stems come up again and if you look at the base of these hazel stands they are absolutely mammoth and that is reflective of their age. Which is indicative to me that they haven't been coppest historically. Let's give a bit of a shout out to a very special lichen found up here in amongst these hazel woods. This species was found a few years ago by a lichenologist called Neil Sanderson and this is actually the only site in England recorded to support this species and it is what we refer to as a hyper oceanic so really wet hazel wood specialist so you don't find it outside of this habitat. And this species is called blackberries encusted and as you can see it's got this really green waxy phallis so the lichen body and then it's got these clusters of black fruiting bodies which resemble blackberries so that's where the common name comes from. Or the Latin for anyone interested is Pyrenula hypernica. This is a grand spot here as you say not easy to get to very loose underfoot a lot of slipping to get up here. But again it's very damp isn't it there are beks coming in and out boggy areas. I suppose this is the picture that people have in their minds when they talk about these Atlantic rainforest. They've just got such a different feel to any other woodlands that you go to. The minute we've come in here it's got that very very damp feel and I'm getting eaten alive by midges. I'm not sure if you are as well and we've not had that all day. And that's reflective of these very localised conditions that these hazels are creating. We'll walk a little bit further and then we'll explore your passion for these places and when it arose. We've gone a few more steps into this really dense wet rainforest up here. This is the Hazel canopy woodland. And I wanted to talk more widely April about yourself and your own interest in these kind of places. Can you remember where your interest in I guess lichens but also these rainforests came from? Absolutely, clearest day. And actually I discovered lichens and this habitat hand in hand at the same time. In my early 20s I was doing an internship for a National Park, Exmore National Park down in the southwest. And my job was very very desspaced. I was managing the environmental data for the National Park and doing lots of GIS and mapping so geographic information systems. So I was in the office all the time but where the office was situated in the barre valley. My lunchtime walks consisted of traversing these very beautiful riparian oak woods along the river barre. And one lunchtime I went out and there was a massive storm the night before and the whole woodland canopy had come down. So it was accessible and there was this branch and it was absolutely festooned in lichens. I looked at them and I had absolutely no idea what these things were. You know, were they plants? Were they a fungus? I couldn't place them mentally. So I dragged this branch, it was about a meter and a half back to the National Park office and showed it to the ecologist. And I was like, Ali, I was like, please you have to tell me what these things are. And she said, oh they're lichens but no one really knows too much about them. And then I started reading about lichens, how they're fantastic indicators of the environment, how they're sensitive to things like air pollution, you know, how they've got chemical composition that can stop the growth of tumor cells and laboratory conditions. All these little facts just grew my interest for them basically and yeah, what am I now? Eight years down the line, nearly a decade into studying lichens and these habitats and I just wouldn't change it for the world. You get to hang out in places like this for your work in life, which is a great privilege, I imagine. But the key thing about a lot of this, and you know, you said it earlier on, is about this scale. You need to get up close and personal with the trees, with a magnifying glass, and then that's kind of when the magic starts in a way, isn't it? Well, it's both. You get the macro scale of the magic that we're looking at right now, but then you get down into that other world. And I mean, that is kind of extraordinary that other world, isn't it? I think it's really important that like we as people slow ourselves down in space and time and, you know, really appreciate the landscape around us and look that little deeper because there's so many fascinating and miniature landscapes underneath our noses, which are so easily overlooked. And the minute you throw a hand lens into the mix, so a times 10 magnification lens that allows you to see 10 times bigger than what you see with the naked eye, it is incredible, the wildlife and the species that all of a sudden come into your focus and on your radar. And if there's anything that I can recommend to anyone listening to this podcast is to invest £2.50 into a hand lens because it will completely enrich the walks that you go on. And personally, what I think is that it will enrich your life. Look, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now. What I want to talk about as we head back to the car park at Sea Tola is some of that landscape management that you mentioned and perhaps talk about how we can help these rainforests to thrive. So we'll very carefully make our way down the hillside, down these scree runs filled with vegetation under this amazing canopy, and we'll talk about the future of our rainforests. While we gingerly made our way back down to the Derwent, plenty cars here lining the road, as you'd expect, lots of people on the highfills. We've got a grand view now, we're looking out over base brown to my right, then we're looking up to great and towering above the valley there, and it's a lovely, lovely day actually. It's warm, fairly close maybe, but after the last few weeks of rain it's a lovely, lovely afternoon. So we're by the Derwent here, and what I wanted to reflect on as we bring this podcast to a close is conservation. First of all, let's talk about some of the threats to these rainforests. Climate change, I guess, we're thinking longer, dry spells for these rainforests that need that consistent wetness, but there will be more. So if you can talk about some of the threats. These woodlands are subject to so many threats, individual threats, but then also these threats come together and interact with one another. So some of the big ones that we're going to be seeing are, as you've mentioned, things like climate change, tree pests and diseases and air pollution. So they're very much the broad issues that we're facing, and as an individual site manager, there's actually very little that you can do to control those things. But on the site level, so on a site basis, the issues that we have, so invasive species is one of them. I just want to split invasive species into both native invasives and non-native invasives. So most people are very aware of non-native invasive species, things such as rhododendron, things such as cherry laurel. These species have evergreen leaves, so they will cast permanent and dent-shade within the woodland ecosystem, overshading absolutely everything, your wildflowers, briar fights, lichens, and then it also stops natural regeneration from happening. But what a lot of people don't know about is the native invasive species, and these are species such as ivy and species such as holly. And in places such as the Lake District, you don't really get those issues with shading of those species, and that's because you have grazing and browsing across the landscape. But in places where I'm from down in the southwest, a lot of these woodlands are exclosed, and grazing and browsing has been permanently excluded. And you get a dense growth of ivy on the trees, ivy on the ground, and you get holly absolutely shooting up. Although these are native species, ecologically, they have the same impact as the non-native species that I have just mentioned. Grazing and browsing within these woodlands is absolutely essential for the ecosystem to flourish. However, it is about getting the right type and the right intensity of grazing, and I think that's what the issue is here across many of our woodlands along the western coast. What we want is natural regeneration, so trees such as oak to come up. But what we don't want is this dense growth of things like holly, ramble, ivy to outcompete everything within the woodland. You mentioned the difference there between overgrazing and undergrazing. What does that look like in a landscape? When we're talking about overgrazed woodlands, we're talking about the grazing levels being unfavorably high. In a lot of woodlands that you get here across the Lake District, where you have quite high stocking density within the woods, you have virtually no oak regeneration within the oak woods, and there is a very, very limited understory as well. Now, this is a problem because it threatens woodland continuity going forward. A lot of these woodlands, you have the post-mature, veteran, and maturing trees, but what you don't have are the regenerating trees, the young, and the maturing. So you get these age gaps in generations. We did a previous podcast where one of our guests mentioned there were no kids and teenagers, you know, it's just a load of old people in the woods. Yeah, there isn't the trees coming up to replace the existing trees, so you have these generation gaps, and at some point there's going to be a breaking woodland continuity going forward. Okay, so that's overgrazed, undergrazed. Undergrazed, let me take you down to the southwest of England. What's happening in the southwest is people will walk through the woodlands, and they won't see any natural oak regeneration. They will automatically attribute that to overgrazing, because that's probably the easiest thing to do. But the reason that we don't have oak regeneration in a lot of our southwestern woodlands is because they are simply too dense. Oak, as a tree species, does not regenerate over a closed canopy. It needs space, it needs gladed situations. So when you look for oak in these woodlands, you'll find it on the woodland interface where there's highlight levels, you'll find it in glage, you'll find it along the rivers. The reason we're not getting this natural regeneration that we want is because of the structural issues within the woodland, and that's what needs to be addressed. Because when you remove grazing from these woodlands and you permanently exclude it with exclosures, you will just get a completely dense understory, bramble, ivy, holly, and that will overshave the tree species that you want to come up to replace the canopy in the woodland. OK, so easy, I guess, to look at an unhealthy woodland and make the wrong assumption about the reason for it there, which is sometimes it isn't the graziers. We need to let light into these woodlands. Light is the fundamental driving force of these ecosystems, and unfortunately, across so many places within Britain and Ireland, they are becoming increasingly shaded, and it's a massive threat, not only to the woodland itself, but to the plethora of wildlifeers. So a balanced approach is really important. And when you say balance, what does that look like in practice? That's a really difficult question for me to answer, because when it comes to grazing and browsing, it has to be done at the site or compartment level. This woodland that we're currently walking through now will need a different regime to those more open wood pastures that we have just come from. So it has to be completely prescriptive to the site, and I think this is where huge benefits come from people like myself who do the surveys, saying what these habitats and the species within them need. The landowners and the farmers saying what's possible and what's not, and then the overarching policy from people like Natural England and Defra as well. So we all have to work together to understand and give these woodlands exactly what it is that they need. This has come up time and time again in conversation, either with conservationists or indeed nature friendly farmers. They would say you need to devolve decision making and indeed funding to a much more localised level so that we can do work to the benefit of whatever landscape feature it is. I mean, I think that's what you're saying, isn't it? Even along this valley, you may need different management approaches for the different areas of woodland. There is no one size fits all approach. Absolutely, and in addition to that, these decisions have to be underpinned by evidence. There needs to be a huge investment in generating data, biological information to work out what we have and what exactly is it that we are protecting. What are the priorities of this site? So much of that information we either don't have or is completely outdated. So I would like to see in the coming years a massive surge with this. So any decisions that are made with nature conservation are all underpinned by biological information. OK, so a lot of data gathering work to be done. Two animals that can be used to aid in landscape management to help this. Large cattle throwing their weight around, they can bring down trees, clear areas. But also, I believe, boar. I've only ever worked at one site where there's been wild boar, and that was up at the Bundloyt Rewilding Project up along the western shores of Loch Ness. And it was really fascinating, actually, because they were altering the landscape on a mammoth scale. Whether the population was too high or not, I'm not entirely sure, but they were actually creating so much soil disturbance that they were uprooting these big, mature oak trees. So on a small scale, that could be deemed disfavorable because you're creating structural diversity. If you bring a tree down, you provide space in the canopy, which allows light to come into. But if this is happening on a large scale, it could be problematic for the entirety of the woodland. So, again, it's coming back to this balanced approach to managing these woodlands. There are so many different factors that you need to take into consideration, and nothing is ever simple when it comes to decisions on management within these woods. A little conversation we were having while we made our way down through the bracket and the brambles was about the contrast that you found with working up in Cumbria. You lived up here, worked up here for two years, and you were saying that you felt it was a really empowered and passionate place for this kind of work, and actually different to other parts of the UK. I find the farming and conservation movement in Cumbria just really inspiring. You've got so many fantastic individuals who are completely committed to this landscape doing such fantastic work, and I really do feel that it needs to be sung about. We've come a little bit uphill through the bracket. We've come to a spot very close to where Pete may have bought us before, but you're the right person to speak to about this April. This is a really proud achievement that we're looking at. We're looking at Ash Pollard, again, seems to have a huge number of mosses and lichens on, but also it's got these tiny areas of gauze that have been kind of stapled to the tree or something. With reference to the gauze that you're seeing with the lichens tucked up underneath it, back in 2020, a really gorgeous and completely spectacular oak tree fell down, and it must have had between 2 to 3 metres squared of this species of lichen called Lungwert lichen or La Beria Pulmanaria. This species is of high conservation importance is one we have an international responsibility for, and it's really, really limited across Cumbria because of historic air pollution. It's so sensitive to its surrounding conditions. So we had two options. It was either to leave this lichen material on the tree to basically die because you get the fungus moving in, the slugs and snails, the algae covering it, so it would have just deteriorated over time. Or the other option was to initiate and instigate this translocation project, and we went for the latter. So what we did is we cut this material up into lots of little fragments, hundreds and hundreds of pieces. The National Trust said it was the biggest translocation project they've ever had in the history of the trust, which was quite exciting. And translocation just to be clear is moving lichen from one place to another. Yeah, transplanting basically. And this was just before we were about to go international lockdown as well, so we had two days to turn this entire project around. So we had to find suitable receptor trees, then do the translocations themselves. Okay, so I've got this kind of mental picture of loads of you. It was hollows farm, wasn't it, where the tree fell? Dozens of people and then driving all these tiny little bits of lichen up the hillside here and hoping that they survive here. So yeah, it was a massive effort across multiple individuals. We were traversing across the Borudel landscape with sacks of laboria, pulmonary area, because it was during COVID. When we did the project, it hit every single national newspaper in the headlines, because I think people were really excited and felt really energized by this project, while so much other terrible stuff was going on in the world. Okay, and looking at it now, so we're four years further on, I think it is, isn't it? I mean, they look to my untrained eyes if there's been a lot of success here. I mean, Dave, I'm absolutely delighted at what I'm seeing on this tree, so I haven't been here since last year to check on these lichens, check on my babies every year. What we're seeing is you've got the lichen with the gorse on top, which is holding it and hugging the material against the tree, but the growth rate has been phenomenal since. So we're probably reaching a time now where we can actually remove the gorse off of the tree, and the lichen will hold itself in situ where it's now formed these attachment points. So up until now, it feels like it's been a huge success. But what I will say is on this one tree, we have our successors, and for all of these successors, we have our failures as well. In general, the success rate is very, very low when it comes to translocations, which, again, is why I'm just so, so happy to be looking at this tree right now. Fabulous, absolutely brilliant. Your conservation success story on a tiny little scale. They seem really happy to me, really happy. So some good news there, April, but some sad news, actually, I hadn't realised until very recently, but we lost an absolutely fabulous tree in Holeswater that I'm sure many listeners will know. This was one of very few veteran Elms left in the county, just above Air Force. Yeah, and it toppled. Do we know why? You're going to bring tears to my eyes discussing this. So, yeah, it was my favourite tree that I've ever come across in the world. It was the most spectacular little Elm Pollard, a couple of hundred years old, that just sat in the Holeswater landscape, watching the world go by. And earlier this year, it was just after that Sycamore was felled, the Sycamore Gap. And it fell when there was extreme weather events that you guys had up here. And on that Elm tree, what's really important to know is that you've not just lost a really majestic and spectacular ancient Pollard, you've lost the suite of life that that tree supported. And there was lots of redlisted species of lichen that were occupying that tree. And I know the National Trust have been speaking and trying to organise another translocation project to remove those significant lichens off of that tree to elsewhere in Holeswater. But, yeah, there are just no efforts, unfortunately, to bring that tree back. So, it is a real, real loss to the Cumbrian landscape, in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, people fall in love with so many trees in this landscape down there, and that was a very special one for many people who love that valley. But, I guess, more work for you, April, you'd be involved with more translocations there. More translocations pending, yeah. Look, we'll go a few steps further, and we've got some quickfire questions for you. We're coming to the end, April. It's been great fun, actually, exploring these different habitats, these different woodlands, absolutely fascinating. I suppose I had in mind that there was a kind of single rainforest, and you've shown us there's so many different types of woodland from the hazel through to the oak, through to those incredible ash stands as well. But we're by the bridge over the dirt. We're going to make our way out of the valley, but before we do that, we're going to subject you to our quickfire questions. OK, here we go. What is your first Lakeland memory? Amazingly, it was in this valley. So, back in 2018, when I started working for Plant Life International, we had a big woodland manager and landowner meeting before the project formally started, and my manager booked our accommodation at Holos Farm. So the first time I'd ever stepped foot in the county, I saw the tree with Laveria, Pulmanaria on, the Lungua on, which I then latter did the translocation on two years after. So, that is like my first fondest memory, and over the years while that tree was standing, I took so many people to see it. So, yeah, my first memory of Lakeland. Fabulous. What's your favourite fell? My favourite fell in Cambria has to be Gao Barrow fell, and just going back to that spectacular elm pollage, you know, it impacted me in such a way, and I've taken hundreds of people across that fell to see that tree specifically. And I'll never forget, when I first went to visit that tree, I was tipped off about it by Ivan Day. He said, "If there's one thing that you do while you're in Cambria, you must go and see the elm tree." And the first time I went, I spent four hours at that tree, admiring it close up through my hand lens, but then also sitting just up slope on the hill and looking at the tree in situ within the Cambrian landscape. And the fact that it's no longer here anymore is absolutely devastating, but, yeah, Gao Barrow will always have a very special place in my heart, even though that tree is now absent. Ivan Day, Alumni of Country Stride Pass, a wonderful Christmas episode with Helen Reebanks. Which season is your favourite in the Lakeland year? Good old winter. I love winter because I love the rain. It saturates the lichens, it makes the rainforest thrives, and all the other pesky vascular vegetation is down so I can see the lichens that I want to see. No distractions, lichens only. On a long walk, where does your mind wander? Honestly, if you get me up in the mountains, not a single thought will go through my brain. I'll get out of my car and there will be disorganised clutter going through my head, and then I get to the top of a mountain and it's like nothing else exists apart from being in the present, so it's very good at emptying my brain. What is your favourite Lakeland view? My favourite Lakeland view has to be high style. There's just something about that mountain that really gets to me with the views over the bottom here and over Enerdale as well. The whole Enerdale project I just find incredibly inspiring, so to have that bird's eye view down that valley from that mountain was quite spectacular. Great walk up there. Describe your perfect Lakeland day. You could put me anywhere in this national park with my hand lens and I would be happy as Larry. What is the unique magic of the Lake District, and I guess you spent a lot of time in wild places all around the UK, but of this national park here, the Lake District, what is its unique magic? We've just spent a good chunk of time today looking at it. The magic that comes from those ash pastures and those ash parlards is incomparable to absolutely anything else, any other habitat that we have here in Britain. It's good to hear your quick-fire question answers there. Thank you very much for joining us today. Absolutely remarkable walk around here that has changed my view of this valley. So many of us, and in fact I was doing it just yesterday, park up here, go up onto the highfills and have an absolute fabulous day, but we pass so much of value and don't see it, and thank you for bringing that alive to us at Countrystride. Thank you so much for having me, it's been such a pleasure. [Music] Churney's end, we're back in Naddle Valley, we've kind of moved around in space and time, but we're back here, Mark, with the breeze blowing and the sun dappling on the hills, rather lovely. I thought it was a really interesting episode, as you said at the start, we tried to widen that recording out to talk much more about rain and forests on a macro scale, I suppose, rather than focusing in on the minutei, but it was lovely to have April, who of course, we kind of heard about before, is the person spearheading that translocation project, which they did just before the lockdown started, taking all these little tiny bits of lichen and trying to find the new homes, and the great thing is they seem to have worked, or at least some of them. I observed it with Pete Martin close to the Borondale use, and it's growing, which is remarkable. It's lovely to see some of these good news stories, and of course, it's part of that bigger good news story about this designation, this King's National Nature Reserve, what that will allow is the trust to put in more resources to fill in some of the gaps. I mean, look, aside from her huge passion for rainforests, which is completely infectious, I really welcome being able to drill down a little bit deeper into some of these conservation challenges, and I tell you, the thing that surprised me most was I had always thought that if you shove up a big Exclosure Fence to keep out the sheep or the deer, you suddenly get an amazing new woodland. And she's saying, no, no, no, no, that has its own dangers, and the danger there is the understory effectively blocks the light from reaching the woodland floor, and you lose not only that floral diversity, the wildflower stuff like that, but also the chance particularly for oaks to regenerate, which I thought was interesting and completely challenged my understanding. Yeah, indeed, I was surprised because I assumed that the bracken consumed and suffocated everything, but actually, it doesn't offer many great little species that we looked at tumbling kittens, or how fabulous. What a beautiful name for a like, and I do love the names of a like, it makes you purr, doesn't it? Thank you. Let's move on to our housekeeping. The first thing to say, Mark, is hefted. Wow. Talk to us about what hefted is. It's a fabulous thing. It's almost like a community magazine newsletter. It gives us much more breadth and depth to what we are trying to achieve through countries' side itself. So it's more than just the voices. It expands what we do in literary form and also in visual form, doesn't it? The kind of things that we can't do easily with the podcast itself. Do check it out. If you just type into Google, hefted substack, that's hefted substack. You'll find it there or you can follow a link from the Countrystride website. Just look up the top there and you'll find a link through to hefted and the newsletter that we send out from there. So if you want regular bulletins from Mark, myself, into a inbox and sign up for it there, and already, there's a wealth of articles. We've asked, "Is this a record year for Mountain Rescue?" Delving into the stats there. We've got Mark's lovely walks, we've got Alan Cleaver talking about some of the cumbrian curiosities, like the longings he's just written about, about the corpse roads. Huge amount of stuff, so come along, say hello there and delve into that if you wish, all of it free as ever. The next thing to say is our event, our summer event, or end of summer event, is coming up soon, Mark. Oh yes, it's on Thursday the 19th of September. That's right, and who's our guests? We've got Phoebe Smith and Tom McNally. Phoebe talking about finding herself on a long walk, on doing some pilgrimages in this country, which is really, really interesting. Tom's photographic project has been called What Lies Beneath. He's delved into those mines and quarries that we've explored. Lattely, of course, with Mark Hatton in Goldscope, so if you want to see what all of that looks like, we'll be chatting to both of them at this event, which is held. Whereabouts, Mark? Oh, that's Porsk Cafe, stop at its lane out of Ambleside, so it's a marvellous veranda and a wonderful outlook at Kelzig. We're throwing in some lovely food as well, so it'll just be a gentle get-together evening with, hopefully, lots to learn. Thirdly, and finally, how are we funding our rapid world domination mark? Well, not very well, but poverty reigns. Yes, indeed. Our labour of love on Country Strident Hefted is kept going by your generous donations, and you can donate, and many people donate for as little as £2 a month at Patreon. And to find out how to do that is very easy, take you about two minutes, you can just, again, go to www.countrystride.co.uk, where you'll find a link to set up just a regular gift to help this podcast thrive and see us through many, many future happy years. I think that's it, we have some brilliant podcast lined up, I think we're off to Whitehaven, but for now, from the Nadel Valley, with very happy memories of Borodale and those incredible rainforests, we're saying goodbye, and see you on next fortnight's Country Stride. [Music] [Music] You
