Hidden away on the crags of Harter Fell are fragments of natural wonder.
Away from the footpaths and the grassy slopes, flowers festoon steep gullies and ledges. Roseroot, wood cranesbill, wild angelica, yellow mountain saxifrage and devil’s bit scabious grow alongside lush stands of ferns and great
The flowers provide nectar for a great abundance of insect life and the steep cliffs make safe nest sites for ring ouzels and ravens. Although incredibly rich, these habitats are tiny relics of what they once were.
This wonderful plant life is often referred to as ‘tall herb ledge vegetation’, but ledges aren’t the only places that it should be growing. Because many of the crag’s species are highly palatable, grazing by both domestic livestock and wild deer, has eliminated them from accessible areas. Many have only been able to cling on in the places that the grazers can’t reach.
Some have been pushed to the very brink of survival. Pyramidal bugle, England’s rarest mountain flower, had become restricted to just one Lake District crag, it’s only location in the whole country.
These crags, and the riches that they hide, are out of sight and out of mind to most visitors. Many are unaware of how much richer the landscape used to be, and could be again.
In 2017 the RSPB, working together with landowner United Utilities, the Alpine Garden Society and Natural England, established the Mardale Mountain Meadow. Installing a fence to keep both sheep and deer out, an exclosure the size of 75 football pitches was created. Carried by small streams, birds and the wind, seeds from the plants on the crags find their way down into the exclosure, where they are now retaking some of the ground they have lost.
After only a few years, the recovery is plain to see. Great carpets of mossy saxifrage and wild thyme now grow on the slopes just inside the fence.
Gravelly areas have been colonised by mountain sorrel and lesser meadow rue, while alpine ladies mantle drapes over the boulders.
The yellow spikes of bog asphodel brighten the wetter ground, alongside heath spotted orchids and fluffy cotton grass. The fragile stems of cranberry creep over the growing hummocks of multicoloured sphagnum moss, signs of a healthy, peat-forming bog.
Along the stream sides, willows and ferns are emerging, shading the babbling water. Heather and bilberry, as well as hawthorn, rowan and birch seedlings are emerging from what was once just species poor acid grassland.
On a warm summer’s day, Mardale Mountain Meadow is now alive with insects. Butterflies flit from flower to flower, while beetles and large hairy caterpillars navigate the thick vegetation below. The insects provide food for birds and small mammals, all benefitting from the recovering plant life.
It is human activity over the course of centuries that caused the decline in the condition of the area’s habitats, so it seems only right that we should also lend a hand in their recovery. With the help of a dedicated team of volunteers, RSPB staff have been growing trees, shrubs and flowers from seeds collected from the local area and planting them out into the exclosure. This will not only speed up the habitat’s recovery, but will also help species like globeflower, melancholy thistle, alpine saw-wort and pyramidal bugle to establish, all species which may not have been able to reach the exclosure by themselves.
The exclosure will continue to develop over the years, providing increasingly rich habitat for a huge range of plants and animals, and a feast for the senses for us.
Mardale Mountain Meadow will provide a powerful demonstration of what more of the uplands could look like in the places where we choose to give nature priority.