30 Days Wild - Week 4

By David Philips

30 Days Wild Guest Blogger

My final week of this year's June 30 days Wild challenge I was fortunate enough to spend in the Vercors region of France. This is a wonderful area of huge scale, dominated by impressive limestone bluffs and dissected by steep gorges; a wildlife paradise especially for those who make the effort to scale the higher parts of the mountains towards the Hauts - Plateaux du Vercors.

A steep ascent and gain in altitude, initially and thankfully assisted by telecabine, was rewarded by stunning scenery and a proliferation of wild flowers - with dazzlingly Blue Trumpet Gentians, Moss Campion, Mountain Avens, Mountain Azaleas and bright yellow Globe Flowers carpeting my route. Griffon Vultures soared effortlessly along the bluffs, scanning the landscape whilst seeking out the thermals on a day approaching 30 degrees whilst flocks of Alpine Chough tumbled raucously through blue skies.

Here communities seem especially passionate about their 'Patrimoine" - their culture. But this word also conveys a sense of shared benefits to a neighbourhood or community with a common bond. Areas of traditional mountain pasture shepherding or Alpage help maintain a landscape and a culture that is super rich in wildlife whilst retaining its natural connections with mankind. Farmers are rightly rewarded for maintaining this kind of husbandry with its very obvious benefits not only for nature but also for their wider communities, their alpine sports and flourishing tourist industries.

Yet in spite of this abundance of wildlife yet more is being done to research, protect and restore - through supported land management in the pastures and the mixed beech and pine forests, and through reintroductions of species such as the incomparable Lammergeier, Ibex and Alpine Marmot alongside a number of the rarer orchids such as Dark Red Helleborine and Lady's Slipper.

Whilst the suitable species might be different, and the landscapes not so immense there are surely possible parallels here for our own South Downs? To help foster a system that properly rewards landowners to revert some of those arable deserts to their former Downland status - and maybe a return to the days when a downland walk could again be rewarded by frequent sightings of Yellowhammer, Grey Partridge, and the soft summer purring of Turtle Doves.