Conservation Cattle Grazing: Wild Ingleborough

Wild Ingleborough Project Assistant, Dwayne Martindale, tells us more on the History of conservation grazing, and how we use livestock to graze the land at Ingleborough for the benefit of nature and wildlife.

When Wild Ingleborough launched in June 2021 there was a new opportunity to collaborate with Natural England, as their Ingleborough National Nature Reserve (NNR) land now joined up with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserves around the mountain and surrounding dales, enabling Wild Ingleborough to manage the land for nature on a landscape scale.

A key component to the Wild Ingleborough program is to focus on nature recovery - increasing tree and scrub cover, allowing for natural regeneration to occur, and to improve the biodiversity and health of the grasslands that were previously managed for farming.

The newly acquired land that was purchased used to hold sheep, and so the pasture was grazed in a way that is good for growing sheep, but poor for biodiversity and nature. Sheep are well adapted to nibbling vegetation down to a low level and can seek out the tastier and more nutritious herbs and plants that grow around the grasses with their nimble mouths. The effect of this is that less palatable species such as thistles and rushes are then able to compete more easily and more species friendly vegetation gets no chance to grow, flower, and put out seed. This reduces biodiversity and creates a very low sward height for the grasses if grazing is too heavy.

For the calcareous grasslands and upland rush pastures now in our stewardship, with such potential for biodiversity, we needed to change the way we grazed. Luckily for us, Natural England already had a solution that has proven to work natural magic on their land - conservation grazing with native breed cattle.

View of some belted galloway cows walking towards the left of the screen going slightly uphill on green terrain, with a view of Ingleborough hill in the distance on a cloudy day. — Southerscales - Belted Galloways and Ingleborough (c) David Berry

What is Conservation Grazing?

Conservation grazing is the use of livestock to graze the land for the purpose of diversifying the grassland structure and improving conditions for biodiversity. Grazing in this way creates a variation in vegetation height and opens up areas of bare ground, which benefits a wide variety of plants and animals and allows for more grasses and wildflowers to seed and germinate. This in turn creates a mosaic of habitat in the grazed land, which increases the number of flowers and therefore invertebrates, which then increases the food available for bird species and more.

There is a variety of approaches to conservation grazing using different livestock breeds often for specific purposes on sites with potential for increasing biodiversity.

In our case, with the help and guidance of our partners in Natural England, we use native breeds of cattle to emulate the grazing patterns and disturbance that would have been occurring when aurochs and other large herbivores were roaming the land.

Cows grazing on a mountain top field in the Yorkshire Dales.

Grazers at Ingleborough (c) Dwayne Martindale

Help us create a wilder Ingleborough through conservation grazing

Biological Land Engineers

When you visit an area that has been grazed by cattle for conservation purposes you can see a large contrast in colour and vegetation height right away from the abundance of plant species that have been allowed to flourish.

An array of colourful wild plants on Ingleborough in summer — An array of purple scabious, heather and knapweed on Ingleborough (c) Dwayne Martindale

As I walk across one of the pastures to check the cattle and their water supplies, the air is filled with the aromas of bedstraws, wild thyme and yarrow.

Flowers of yellow, pink, purple, blue and white are abundant, and every few steps reveals a moth or butterfly from the undergrowth, finding sanctuary in the longer grasses.

moth in the grass — Silver Y moth (c) Dwayne Martindale

I see where the cattle have been treading. The large red poll, blue-grey and shorthorn cattle that make up the herd are leaving scrapes and footprints wherever they go which opens the grassy sward to allow fresh seeds to get to the soil below.

Plants such as cowslip and oxslip are named for their eagerness to thrive in these areas where a cow has slipped and revealed open ground to seed into, and many more species take the same advantage. These hoof prints also fill up with rainwater which creates temporary mini ponds in places that are colonized by water-loving invertebrates and fly larvae. Such tiny, specific habitats can play a huge role in the bigger ecosystem.

As I follow the footprints, I see the ‘pats’, the cow dung that is left in the wake of their grazing efforts. It is perhaps not usually the most desirable thing to look closely at, cattle dung, but looking at the droppings of the herd you notice that these are not like the usual sloppy, acidic cowpats you normally see in dairy pasture cattle. These mounds of dung look more like the molehills. They are full of vegetative structure and as the cattle are all organic, they are also free of medicines and worming chemicals.

You can see from the number of invertebrates including dung beetles that thrive on the dung that this is regeneration in action and supports the foundation level of the food web. Fungi soon follows, taking advantage of the nutrients at offer as the dung is gradually broken down by organisms to improve the health of the soil.

Cows grazing on a mountain top field in the Yorkshire Dales. There is one cow near the camera with its head turned towards it — Grazers at Ingleborough (c) Dwayne Martindale

I finally come to see the cattle after a good walk across the NNR, which have been constantly on the move and not staying in one place for too long. This persistent moving around is partly what helps to create a mosaic of habitats and structure as one area is never grazed for too long, and others may be left alone completely for a while.

I say ‘hello’ to the cattle as I do a good nose to tail check of their health, looking for signs of injury, illness or change in behaviour. They don’t mind me at all, very placid in their nature and quite happy to give me a quick look over before getting back to their work. Brida, one of the more recognisable cows in the herd, comes over for a head scratch and a nosey.

There is a very calming aspect to being around cattle as they do their thing. They are very clever animals and come to get to know you after a while. They also get to know what the vet’s van looks like too which means they park out of view when coming to do veterinary health checks on the cattle or the cattle will make themselves scarce!

Conclusion

The benefits of conservation grazing with low numbers of native cattle are already apparent on large swathes of the Ingleborough NNR after years of management by the NNR team. The newly acquired lands we have received, however, were a blank canvas. A new frontier for the cattle to kickstart biodiversity in.

It has been incredible to see the number of wildflowers, orchids, and butterfly species that have returned to these pastures after the cattle have started to transform the land, and the visual look of the grass seed heads blowing in the wind and the scent of nectar on the air is just breathtaking.

Butterflies (c) Dwayne Martindale

Grass of Parnassus white flowers in the green grass

Grass of Parnassus (c) Dwayne Martindale

Bee on a purple thistle collecting nectar

Bee on a thistle collecting nectar (c) Dwayne Martindale

Grass of Parnassus single white flower with a pink and yellow centre in the green grass

Grass of Parnassus (c) Dwayne Martindale

Cows grazing on a mountain top field in the Yorkshire Dales. There is one cow near the camera facing towards it

Grazers at Ingleborough (c) Dwayne Martindale

Our monitoring and research team have also found that natural regeneration of trees and shrubs is much higher in conservation grazed areas than in areas of sheep grazing, and grazing has shown to create enough diversity and disturbance to prevent grasses and dead vegetation from becoming too dominant which would prevent many plant species from growing.

In conclusion, life and biodiversity literally follows in the footsteps of the cattle. These amazing, resilient bioengineers of the land are continuing to improve the health of the pastures and bring a wash of colour and birdsong to land which so desperately needs a lease of life in the Yorkshire Dales.

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Conservation Cattle Grazing: Wild Ingleborough