Core to action to safeguard Sussex’s traditional orchards
Spring has finally arrived, and now is the ideal time to contribute to a national project to conserve your traditional orchards. The final year of producing the national inventory for traditional orchards is already upon us and we need your help.
The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) is calling for volunteers in Sussex to help survey the county’s orchards as part of its nationwide project to promote the conservation of traditional English orchards. Having secured additional funding from Natural England and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, PTES now wants to recruit volunteers in Sussex to help complete a vital inventory of traditionally managed orchards.
Photo: Sussex Wildlife Trust
Existing data about the amount of traditional orchard habitat remaining in England is outdated and incomplete. Through a painstaking analysis of aerial photographs, covering 8.5 million hectares of the English countryside, PTES has located over 25000 traditional orchards to date. Over 200 trained volunteers have already taken part, helping to survey the orchards, recording the species, age and condition of the fruit trees.
In East Sussex 260 individual traditional orchards have been identified from aerial photographs, with 689 in West Sussex. PTES is now seeking the help of volunteers to help verify findings from desk research by undertaking a field survey of their local orchards.
Photo: Paul Glendell/Natural England
Over the next year and a half, PTES aims to deliver a comprehensive national inventory in England, due for completion by 2011 that incorporates the condition, age, boundaries and management status of each traditional orchard, which will underpin the conservation of this threatened habitat, and raise awareness about the importance of traditional orchards in the ecological landscape.
Fruit and vines have been grown in the UK since the Roman occupation and traditional orchards represent a much loved part of our British heritage offering a great range of fruit, places of tranquillity and clues to our past culinary tastes and culture. Characteristically, traditional orchards consist of a low density of trees set in semi-natural, mainly herbaceous, vegetation. They are cultivated using low-intensity methods such as the absence of pesticides and the use of grazing animals instead of herbicides and man-made fertilisers.
Traditional orchards are hotspots for biodiversity and support a wide range of species, including many which are rare or scarce, such as the Noble Chafer. These wildlife refuges are becoming increasingly uncommon due to agricultural intensification, pressure from development, and economic competition within a global market and the increase of imported fruits, all of which are putting the already endangered species orchards support under even greater threat.
Photo: Hugh Clark/Sussex Wildlife Trust
“Most worryingly of all,” says Anita Burrough, Orchard Project Officer at PTES “is that overall orchards have declined by over 60% in the last 50 years – in some areas habitat has been recorded as declining by between 1-2% per year. With this loss of habitat, we also face losing rare English fruit varieties, traditions, customs and knowledge, in addition to the genetic diversity represented by at least 1800 species that are associated with traditional orchards. Securing the help of volunteers is vital in helping us to make progress with inventorying remaining traditional orchards.”
The traditional orchards project being championed by PTES is part of a wider collaboration of UK conservation organisations and this information will be made available to the Traditional Orchard group and other groups (including birds, bats, lichens and fungi), conservation organisations, policy makers, Local Authority planners and anyone with an interest in traditional orchard habitat.
To volunteer for the PTES traditional English orchards mapping project in Sussex, please contact Anita Burrough, Orchard Project Officer on 020 7498 4533 or e-mail anita@ptes.org.
