Heather Corrie Vale: One year on

In the last year at Heather Corrie Vale, we’ve installed the infrastructure for the site, including hundreds of metres of fencing around the perimeter to contain the livestock that we desperately need as a natural tool for management. We’ve also been liaising with the neighbours and the local communities so they’re aware of what we’re doing and why we’re doing it.  

Crucially, we’ve been training livestock checkers who perform daily checks on the welfare of the animals. Now, we have a team of volunteers who are fully trained by Kent Wildlife Trust staff – they come out daily to check on the animals and make sure they’re all healthy and well! 

Heather Corrie Vale has been naturally evolving during this time. We’ve got scrub starting to develop from the hedgerows, from the woodlands; there’s blackthorn and hawthorn and oak starting to emerge and now, we’re starting to see them pop through in the grassland areas.  

The cattle really help with this process. They get through the big, tussocky grass that’s developed by a lack of management over the last few years which stops a lot of the seeds from germinating and stops many plants and wildflowers from breaking through. The cattle are breaking it up with their grazing, and the sheer weight of them also breaks up the soil, letting light through and allowing for germination on the floors of the grassland and woodland areas. 

This, in turn, brings the biodiversity we were hoping for more of at Heather Corrie Vale. Already, we’ve got more species starting to come through in a wider area of the site, which is great not only for the establishing wildflowers, grasses, and trees, but also for the invertebrates. We’re seeing good butterfly numbers coming through, for example. There are also miner bees in the old bunkers on the site. As for birds, there’s a much greater diversity now than we saw before. 

In short, the more management we do and the more natural our approach to it, the more the wildlife reacts and the more a plethora of species comes through at Heather Corrie Vale. 

The habitat we’ve got here now is a mixture of grassland, woodland, and scrub.  

More scrub is starting to emerge from the woodland areas and the existing hedgerows and the grasslands are becoming richer in biodiversity. The cattle start breaking up the tussocky grass, breaking up the ground and allowing the grasses and wildflowers to start germinating and coming through. And gradually over time that’s going to become more scrubby, the woodland will become bigger and more diverse, and the grasslands themselves are also going to become more diverse with different wildflowers and grasses. In turn, invertebrates and other wildlife will start to call it home. 

Heather Corrie Vale is one of the pathfinder projects of Wilder Carbon. By restoring it through natural processes, we can sequester greater levels of soil and above-ground carbon. The more regeneration we get here, with the scrub emerging from the woodland and hedgerows into the grassland areas, the scrubs start to lock up carbon as they grow. Young trees do the same as they become more mature woodland trees. 

Through restoring the landscape, we’re creating something that delivers for both wildlife and carbon. UK businesses can invest by buying credits from Heather Corrie Vale as a high-integrity way of dealing with their residual emissions. 

In turn, with the continued funding from carbon credit buyers, we’re able to continue with the management of the site to allow it to become a utopia for wildlife. We’ll be able to continue with the grazing cattle, which is currently split in half by the road. We’re only grazing one side; shortly, we’ll be grazing the other side and bringing that management across the entire site.