Could you tell us about your role at Cornwall Wildlife Trust?

It's my job to oversee the management of the 20 nature reserves stretching from Truro to Lands End and over to Lizard Point, which amounts to 1,450 acres.

This includes the Penwith peninsula, which is amongst the remaining strongholds for lowland heath in the country.

So why is lowland heath in decline?

Over the past two centuries, heathland has been considered wasteland. It’s been regularly broken in to create farmland or, in some cases, has been built upon.

Some of what survives is managed through grazing and cutting, whilst others can be neglected and allowed to bramble over or become covered in bracken. 

Heathlands have suffered the same fate as many semi-natural habitats across the country, they have been steadily shrinking and becoming isolated islands. The smaller they get the less stable the habitats become, which has an adverse knock-on effect on species within them.

Some species can't survive in these islands, and they can't move either, so are lost from those sites. But what's exciting is that we can make some of these islands bigger or create links or wildlife corridors between them by managing the land between them sympathetically, such as targeted regenerative farming.

So what makes a good heathland?

A healthy heathland is one that has a good age range of typical heathland plants and range of vegetation heights. Within which could be a range of different aged habitats. These include bare ground, areas covered in lichens and mosses, disturbed ground, flowery acid grasslands, humid heath, bogs, pioneer heathers, older heathers and scrub.

Even bracken and bramble are important elements of a heathland and a good heathland has an interesting mix, a patchwork of these different elements.

Has lowland heath always been considered ecologically valuable?

It wasn’t really recognized as valuable until things became critical and we started seeing a decline in species heavily associated with heathland like Dartford warbler, nightjar, and small red damselfly. 

If people wanted to see an example of a beautiful area of lowland heath, which of our reserves should they visit?

Well, our Bartinney nature reserve really is a good one. In recent years, thanks to a legacy fund, it’s become a much larger site with a fantastic mosaic of habitats, from boggy ground with ponds, sphagnum and cotton grass, through to flower rich hay meadows and scrubby pasture leading to the more typical dry open heath.

Cornwall Wildlife Trust's practical site management and our graziers' livestock helps maintain and improve these habitats.  At a smaller scale are the important features such as the bare ground created by either humans or livestock which are quickly colonised by nesting solitary bees and wasps, or the cattle tracks through the heath where some amount of soil compaction creates ideal conditions for wild flowers like lousewort or tormentil.

Even the cow pats on Bartinney are important; the lack of chemical wormers means the dung is rich in beetles and their larvae, which are in turn an important food source for birds and bats.     

Can much wildlife be seen at Bartinney?

Yes – Bartinney is teeming with life. In the wildflower hay meadows over the past five years, Cornish bee and wasp expert Paddy Saunders has recorded over fifty species of solitary bees and wasps. This includes the incredibly rare tormentil nomad bee.

In the summer you’ll hear skylarks, meadow pipits, cuckoos, stonechats, wheatears, linnets and grasshopper warblers. In the evening you might get lucky and hear a nightjar and spot bats hunting for moths. 

It sounds like a special place to visit...

The compacted ground near the entrance gateway has little pools with beetles whizzing around on them.

Walk into the site at this time of year and straightaway you're hit by the amount of yellow flowering tormentil and birds foot trefoil. It's full of bees.

Then you walk to the boggy area and the ponds will have dragonflies buzzing around them in amongst the cotton grass and sphagnum moss. Stride up the hill and it gets drier - you're now in hay meadow and you've got a profusion of insects. 

Coming up to the heathland you'll start hearing stonechats. When they see you, they start making a noise like two stones being knocked together, and all the while, you've got skylarks and meadow pipits singing overhead, and swallows zooming over to catch the insects. You’ll probably be able to hear a cuckoo off in the distance somewhere.

At the top of Bartinney Castle you can see four and a half thousand years of history - there’s the Bronze Age (2500 BCE - 800 BCE) circular enclosure thought to be a place of worship, medieval field systems and 17^th century mine works. The views include the Isles of Scilly, the long ship rocks off Lands end, Ding-dong engine house and St Michael's Mount. 

Around the castle Cornwall Wildlife Trust are restoring almost 200 acres of heathland and wildflower meadow.

So, yes, the site is special and is a culmination of the sustained hard work of volunteers, neighbours, farmers, expert recorders, funders and staff.   

Terrain at Bartinney can be difficult and muddy at points.

To protect ground-nesting birds (meadow pipits, skylarks) in the summer, and ground-feeding birds (snipe, woodcock) in the winter, dogs should be kept under effective control.

Cattle and ponies graze on this site (April to December).