Minster Marshes, its bird life, and the impacts of Sea Link

Podcast transcript

The following conversation starts at timestamp [44:15] in the podcast.

Rob Smith: Now if I say the word 'gamekeeper', what pops into your mind? It may well have some negative connotations. You might have some kind of Victorian notions of an angry man in a deerstalker hat shooting poachers and poisoning anything that isn't a pheasant or a grouse. You might think of Danny, Champion of the World and maybe have some hazy romantic notions of a kind of face-off between good and evil. People often have all sorts of strong reactions to the notion of a gamekeeper, especially in the world of nature conservation. But the reality is that because gamekeepers are responsible for maintaining habitats where pheasants, partridges, hare, deer, and grouse can all thrive, looking after the woods and hedgerows and fields in which the game birds and animals live is crucial. And between them Britain's gamekeepers look after more countryside than all the national parks and nature reserves put together. 

Now, George Cooper is a gamekeeper. He works the land at Abbey Farm in Minster-in-Thanet, and he also recently set up the campaign group, Save Minster Marshes, because he's frightened of the impact that the National Grid's plans for building a new converter station and the cabling and the pylons that go with it for the proposed Sea Link project. He's worried about what the impact is going to be on the wildlife there. For George, a healthy landscape with a real diversity of wildlife also provides the best conditions for his ducks and pheasants. So he's created a kind of unexpected alliance with all sorts of environmental groups locally to try and prevent anything being done that will damage the countryside he loves. I met up with George on an early blustery morning in a field in the middle of the Minster Marshes farmland. 

George Cooper: 53 years I've been coming here as a lad fishing, and then 25 years as the gamekeeper on Abbey Farm. 

Rob Smith: And as a gamekeeper, what does that mean? What do you actually do? 

George Cooper: Well, I manage the birds that we release, so pheasants and ducks. So we get them in at seven weeks old and I look after them and nurture them and feed them and water them, and just look after them basically. But it also involves, you know, I'm here every day so I record the wildlife - encouraging, making it good for game birds and waterfowl makes it good for everything. Like I probably put out half a ton of food every time I come out. And probably half of that is ate [sic] by the wild population of birds. 

Rob Smith: Now does that make you unusual as a gamekeeper, that you like that, that actually you want to encourage the wildlife? 

George Cooper: Not through my experience. Most gamekeepers started like I started, when it was legal. Most people I know that got into bird watching or birds started by bird egging when it was legal. And then it got you an interest, and we were always out in the countryside looking for bird's nests, and it makes you interested in wildlife. And so most of them start from that and then they get into shooting and then they become professional gamekeepers. But they take that with them through their lives, and most of the wildlife that they interact with every day doesn't cause them any problems, it's there, but doing what they do like on the dry... it's not so bad idea because we've got water. But on another estate I work, there's no water, no standing water. So we had put water out every day for our pheasants, which all the other birds have got access to and they've got access to the food. So it makes it easier for them. 

Rob Smith: So the field that we're stood in here, just describe it for me because I'm not a land expert as it were. It's quite, it's very low lying. It's very, you know, there is water in the fields here. It's not the time of year for crops to be growing, but there's no bare earth anywhere. 

George Cooper: No, there's no bare earth because nowadays most farmers put what's called a catch crop on. So it's planted after harvest. We plant it directly into the stubbles so we don't plow. There's minimal cultivation or no cultivation. So it's drilled directly into the stubbles, and then that grows and that takes the nitrates out of the soil, stops soil erosion, puts organic matter back into the soil. So the soils, it's actual [sic] better soil structure. You're not destroying the worms because you're not plowing, the seagulls aren't eating them. Lot of the invertebrates in that survive. So it's absolutely perfect for wildlife. 

Rob Smith: And that means that you do get an amazing amount of bird life down here. And this birds are really your thing, isn't it? So just give us a list of some of the wildlife that you see when you, because you're down here pretty much every day, aren't you? 

George Cooper: Oh, every time I come down, I would probably count 40 species of birds. We've got beavers. I see slow worms, grass snakes, common lizards, water voles, mink (sadly, but that's something that we need to get on). Every day is different. Some days you can come down there is next to nothing. Other days there's curlew, golden plover, birds of prey, we've got every species of owl down here. Obviously the short-eared owls only come in the autumn in the winter. But we've got resident long-eared owls, barn owls, tawny owls, little owls, some of them nest here. You name a bird, and we've probably got it down here.  

Rob Smith: And as we were here, I mean literally as we just stopped here. So we kind of putted out on the little four-wheel drive vehicle, the ATV to get through there because It's quite muddy on the farm track. But we stopped here and there were some skylarks. 

George Cooper: Yeah, loads of skylarks. We've rung more skylarks on Abbey Farm than anyone in Kent since 2021. 67 skylarks we've ringed, which is a fantastic number. 

Rob Smith: And do you put that down to the way that the land is being farmed? Because a decade ago, they farmed it in a different way here, didn't they? 

George Cooper: Yeah, it's definitely better how they're farming it now for wildlife. The catch crop I think is one of the major things - leaving it over winter in stubble is really good because it leaves a certain amount of bits of wheat for birds to feed on, gives them cover. The extra catch crop that they drill in, it gives it more cover so the birds can feed out there all day without being predated. It's fantastic for wildlife. 

Rob Smith: And as we look across the field at the moment, I mean, well we saw literally hundreds of cormorants flying out, didn't we, earlier on? 

George Cooper:  Thousands. Yeah. 

Rob Smith: How important to you is this piece of land here? 

George Cooper: This area, East Kent, I think it’s majorly important for migrating birds. We are ever so close to Europe. So a lot of the migrating birds obviously follow the coast down to Pegwell Bay and Sandwich Bay, which is literally probably not even half a mile away from us here. And they work their way down here to cross to Europe. So if this is all developed, where are they going to feed before they cross the channel? You know, I saw a bird through the binoculars, it's called a wheatear. And I didn't really notice when I see it in the binoculars, but later on when I checked my photographs, it had a colored ring on its leg. So I researched it and it had come from Skokholm Island in Pembrokeshire where they're doing a wheatear ringing project.  

George Cooper: That's the only second ring bird that they've had recorded and both have been in Kent. We've rung nearly 30% or lesser whitethroats in Kent last year. And nearly 15% of the Cetti's warblers, you know, and we do it once a week. We're not doing it every day. We've ringed 1200 birds in three months without the other species that we've ringed at night like woodcock and skylarks and other birds. You know, people look at this landscape and think 'there's nothing here, it's just a monoculture' - it's full of wildlife that you don't see. 

Rob Smith: Do people find it strange that because you are so passionate about the wildlife that's here, but you are a gamekeeper and you set up the land for shooting? And lots of people might think there's a contradiction in that? 

George Cooper: Well a lot of people do. I don't find there's a contradiction because I've always been a country person and I love wildlife. Maybe there is a little bit, sometimes I ask that question myself, and obviously now I'm older, I don't shoot as much as I used to. I still do me shooting and that, but I think it goes cap in hand, conservation and gamekeeping. I know a lot of people can't see that. But I could guarantee you if I took you on any shoot through this country, I've had the privilege to go on many, some of the biggest estates in this country, most shooting estates have got a lot of wildlife because they're undisturbed because they don't let people walk everywhere and let their dogs run everywhere. They feed the birds, they control the predator species. Now they even control them on reserves like the RSPB and that they've controlled birds that predate on rare birds and that, it's no different. You know, we could probably change our name to rangers, and then it might be better for people if we called ourselves rangers. But I've got no problem being, I'm quite proud to be a gamekeeper to be perfectly honest. 

Rob Smith: Now as we look just behind us here, so across the fields, there's a big patch of woodland and there's a huge hedgerow that goes that way, that in itself is massively important, isn't it? 

George Cooper: Yeah. That's a SSSI [Site of Special Scientific Interest]. So that's teeming with wildlife, which is basically becoming an island. You've got the old Richborough, so-called green energy park to one side of it. You've got the treatment works and the anaerobic digester and now a grid stability building that's going to be built. And possibly if they can't drill the cables underneath the SSSI, they're going to have to open trench it, which will destroy it. Now that's got a heronry, it's got nesting Egrets, it's got some birds that I can't really mention, but you name a bird, it's in there. It's undisturbed because you can't access it because it's so overgrown. But it's good because people can't access it. It's really, really important. It links Minster Marshes and the Stour Valley to Sandwich Bay and Pegwell Bay and then onto Europe for migrating birds. It's really, really important area. And this development they want to do is going to be smack bang next to it, you know, with humming cables 24/7, 365 days a year, you know, and lights and disturbance. 

Rob Smith: And the actual physical size of the building as we look across the field there, you're saying that they've put a couple of bore holes in to test for the water levels, funnily enough in the marsh. There's quite a lot of water here, isn't it? 

George Cooper: Yeah 

Rob Smith: But the physical building itself is going to be massive. 

George Cooper: Oh, huge. It's going to be, for want of a better word, it's going to look like a huge great big football stadium. It's a hundred foot high, so a hundred foot high and it's going to be nine hectares. So that equates to 22 football pitches. And then they're putting supersized pylons, which are going to run perpendicular to the River Stour, straight across the River Stour, which we have massive problems with birds like swans crashing into them. I mean two miles upstream from where we are now, in 2003, 179 mute swans were killed in one go. You go on the marsh now and you hardly see any swans. The numbers aren't there anymore. And now you want to put more cables across the marsh. There's going to be like a fishing net stretched across the River Stour. 

Rob Smith: So, as a final thought then, I know you want to Save Minster Marshes, that's the campaign, isn't it?  

George Cooper: Yeah.  

Rob Smith: What do you want people to do? 

George Cooper: Well, I'd like people to sign the petition. The more signatures we get on the petition, the more power we've got. Get involved, really, read about it on Facebook and Get Wild and look at the Kent Wildlife Trust site and the RSPB. Everyone's trying to fight it, but we need people behind us to stop this. We don't want to stop it because supposedly we need green energy. But this is all down to cost. Instead of running the cable in at Pegwell Bay, they could run the cable into the old Dungeness Power Station site, which is on the beach. It's got a massive area that's unused there, but it's down to the cost of putting the cable there. This is all down to cost, plus National Grid make a fortune at the NEMO link at Richborough. So they obviously want this to link in to the undersea cable that goes to Europe. 

This is all about money. It's a private company and they want to pay their shareholders. You know, through my experience over this - which has been over a year now I've been trying to do something about this - they don't care about the wildlife. It's all about money. That's all it's about. And you know, this is the first time you've ever been down here, and it's not a particularly good day for birds for whatever reason, that's how it goes. But it is an amazing place and it's pretty remote for East Kent. You know, Thanet is getting more and more developed. This is one of the wildest places in Thanet that's left. Once they build that, that's it. Spoilt. And then what's to stop them, once they've built that carrying on, taking more of the marsh. 'Oh, we want to put more battery storage'. What people have got to realise, is this is the third cable that's come into Pegwell Bay. 

They've put the NEMO link through. There's rumors that they've got to restring the NEMO link that was only put in in 2018. So they got to put bigger cables on it. You know, they haven't got a plan of what to do for the future. They're just adding bits on all the time. And this is wrong. You know, this isn't just here, this is in Suffolk and Norfolk and Essex and Scotland. It's all over the country that people are trying to fight National Grid, you know? And we need more and more people behind us from all over the country to try and stop this. 

A jack snipe at Minster Marshes

Rob Smith: George Cooper, gamekeeper at Abbey Farm on Minster Marshes there. You can hear the passion in his voice, can't you? And he's far from being alone in his concerns. The local MP, sir Roger Gale is backing the campaign. I'm hoping that we're going to be talking with Sir Roger in the next episode about why he thinks this is such a significant issue. Kent Wildlife Trust, of course is campaigning for the National Grid to Rethink Sea Link. If you want to get involved, then just search for Save Minster Marshes online. There's a petition as well with change.org that already has nearly 10,000 signatures. Adding your name to that list would be a help. 

Now as we draw to the end of the podcast, firstly, thank you for making it this far. People like you make the world a better place. And secondly, here's the latest news. 

The government has announced its pulling out of a controversial treaty that currently allows fossil fuel firms to sue governments over their climate policies. The Energy Charter Treaty was originally set up to protect oil company investments in former Soviet territories back in the 1990s. And it allows them to potentially claim hundreds of millions of pounds in lost profit expectations if governments block their activities. Graham Stewart, the energy security and net zero minister said that the ECT is outdated and in urgent need of reform, but talks have stalled and sensible renewal looks increasingly unlikely. Remaining a member would not support our transition to cleaner, cheaper energy and could even penalize us for our world leading efforts to deliver net zero or green groups have praised the decision saying that the ECT is now a dead man walking, and only those profiting from the destruction of our planet will mourn its passing. 

First came, the beavers, then came the bison. Now could the Southeast be facing the return of the Pine Martin? Well, that's certainly the hope of the Pine Martin Restoration Project, which sees Kent and Sussex Wildlife Trusts teaming up with Wildwood and Ashdown Forest and Forestry England to look into whether the voracious little mustard lids could regain a toehold here. 200 years ago, they were pretty common across the UK, but hunting and habitat loss means that Pine Martens are now only found in more remote parts of Scotland and the Welsh borders. Search for Pine Martens on the Kent Wildlife Trust website to find out more. 

And in what's being touted as a world first England's biodiversity net gain law has come into force this month. It means that if a habitat is destroyed for homes or roads or other developments, equivalent habitats must be recreated onsite or elsewhere. And more than that, actually see a 10% biodiversity gain rather than simply replacing what's been lost. And RIBA, the Royal Institute of British Architect says it represents a major change in policy, and architects will now have to design with nature.  

Well that's it for Talk on the Wild Side for this episode, please do like and subscribe and mention it to your friends and write to your MP to let them know how good it is. Special thanks to Natasha Aidinyantz for her essential production inputs. I'm Rob Smith. This has been a Wild Rover Media production, and until next time, do go wild in the country.