Little did I think that after reviewing the CNHS’s 70th anniversary book (click here) I’d be revisiting them again so soon but this book, describing the wildlife of Middlewick Ranges is now rather topical. In the recent Wild Justice report (authored by Kiera Chapman, Malcom Tait and Rob Davies – click here), Middlewick Ranges is highlighted as a site which qualifies for SSSI status (and all the protection that brings with it) but isn’t even in the Natural England pipeline for designation – click here. The owners, the Ministry of Defence, are playing a poor hand badly by saying that if the site isn’t designated then they don’t have to have a plan, and NE is aiding and abetting this hopeless approach of a government department by not designating the site for reasons that are somewhat unfathomable but probably include fear of annoying a government that would rather see houses than wildlife.
This book doesn’t get deeply into those arguments, and arguably it should have got into them in more detail and with greater clarity, but it does a good job of cataloguing the wildlife from fungi to insects and from beetles to slime moulds. There is no doubt that this is a gem of a site with waxcaps in the grassland and a host of nationally scarce invertebrates scattered across just about all the habitats in the site deserves SSSI status.
Middlewick is itself fortunate in having such a range of wildlife experts on its doorstep – people with great knowledge and the ability to survey the site – and to have the Friends of Middlewick who have fought many battles to protect the site from urbanisation over many years.
This site clearly qualifies as an SSSI on a variety of grounds and yet it isn’t even listed as being in the queue (why is there a queue anyway?) for SSSI designation and so the site fails to get optimal management and is less protected from assault than it should be.
Sometimes nature conservation is complicated but sometimes it is pretty simple. Where a mechanism for site protection and appropriate management has been established by parliament, and a public body exists to see that work through, then the absence of Middlewick Ranges from fast-track designation is shocking. What is the point of Natural England if it fails sites like this? And how many more such sites are being neglected by the public body which should be championing them?
The cover? It’s a very good capture of a Ruby-tailed Wasp superimposed on the site itself. I’d give it 8/10.
Wildlife of Middlewick Ranges edited by Russell Leavett is published by the Colchester Natural History Society in association with the Friends of Middlewick.
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