Page 24 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04

rambles curl around the battered hulk of
a wrecked tank, reclaiming it for nature.
Its rusting caterpillar tracks are almost
hidden in a sea of yellowing grasses and
flowers reaching to the horizon in every
direction. There’s swathes of wild carrot,
wild parsnip, greater knapweed, dyer’s
Bgreenweed, lady’s bedstraw, meadow
cranesbill, viper’s bugloss, weld, devil’s-bit scabious. Under
a hot July sun, the gently rolling landscape thrums with
countless grasshoppers and bees. Overhead, skylarks sing
and linnets twitter non-stop. Yellowhammer song comes
from distant hawthorn scrub. A corn bunting jangles away.
But something is noticeable by its absence. Modern life.
There is no traffic noise, no tractors working in fields, not
even the sound of passing trains. Also missing are pylons,
mobile-phone masts, solar-panel arrays, wind turbines and
all the other paraphernalia of our 21st-century countryside.
If it weren’t for the decaying military hardware, this idyllic
scene could pass for a sleepy backwater in rural France –
‘La France profonde’. Yet this is definitely England.
The Ministry of Defence Salisbury Plain Training Area
(SPTA) is a place everyone has heard of but relatively
few, other than those in uniform, get to explore properly.
“Nowhere else in the country looks quite like it any more –
and that’s the point,” enthuses MoD ecologist Julie Swain.
“This is one of the largest wildernesses we have left in the
densely populated, intensively farmed lowland south. It’s
becoming a stronghold for more and more species.”
WELCOME TO THE DANGER ZONE
Julie is my guide for the day, together with Tom Theed
of Landmarc, the company that manages the MoD’s
190,000-hectare estate across Britain. We’re chaperoned by
Major Andy Riddell and Senior Training Safety Officer WO1
Les French, who have picked a date when there are no big
exercises, though we see some camouflaged Land Rovers
tear past and a Chinook helicopter judders over.
Much of central Wiltshire to the north of Stonehenge
is taken up by the SPTA,
which is roughly the size
of the Isle of Wight. It
has its origins in army
land purchases dating
back to 1897, during the
South African wars of
Left, top to bottom:
independence. Wiltshire
military exercises
was chosen partly because rough up the earth,
it was then among the increasing floristic
poorest English counties; diversity; Senior
Training Safety
land was cheap.
Officer Les French
Look at Ordnance and Major Andy
Survey Landranger map Riddell in the ‘ghost
184 and, aside from the village’ of Imber;
Devizes–Salisbury and Julie Swain and
Tom Theed hunt for
Marlborough–Salisbury
interesting insects.
A roads, you’ll see it as
a huge stretch of white
nothingness. The most
frequent label, in pink
capitals, is “Danger Zone”.
A million man-training
days are carried out here
each year, a figure set to
24 BBC Wildlife