Farming for Wildlife and BBC Springwatch

by Pete Walters 13 March

Pete is the Farm Manager of the Fishleigh Estate in North Devon and divided his talk into two to cover firstly the way in which this working farm has been managed and improved for wildlife and secondly the events leading up to Britain Goes Wild and leading from there into Springwatch.

His Explanation of the layout of the farm and the flora and fauna therein was backed up with some excellent photographs on Powerpoint. He explained how the woodlands had been managed, hedgerows planted (in the places where there had been hedgerows before the European Union had given subsidies to grub them out!) and field margins left for wild flowers, their seeds and the animals, birds and insects which need them. The farm had gone organic with no nitrates used and the predator insects had replaced insecticides. Butterfly population had increased dramatically as had dragonflies and damsel flies. Over 200 nestboxes had been erected creating a ‘birds heaven’. The result had been a large increase in all forms of wildlife and records of all flora and fauna were kept and passed on to all the main conservation organisations together with ringing records of over 3,000 birds. The farm had a particular interest in encouraging children as the future generation.

After the break Pete explained how he had been approached by the BBC who were looking for a farm in England to use as a base for a new series called Britain Goes Wild. He had expected it to be a low key production with ‘a tent, a producer and a camera man’ but had found himself faced with a huge production team of over 100 needing ‘a village’ not a tent and a road to be constructed to enable all the equipment, cranes and all. It was when Bill Oddie turned up that Pete realised this was going to be a bit bigger than expected and he decided that things were definitely looking up when he was introduced to Kate Humble. The programme eventually turned into Springwatch with a viewing audience of 4.2 million. The intention is now for a CBBC’s programme and a Badger Watch in addition to Springwatch.

Pete was thanked for not only giving our members an insight into the farm and programme but also creating the right habitat for all the wildlife which, after all, are the main celebrities on the show.

John Allan