Wild Fell: Fighting for nature on a Lake District hill farm

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From golden eagles, to the submerging of villages for the construction of the reservoir, to the Corpse Road, this serves as a monument to the history of the area, though its raison d'etre is the story of Schofield and his team at the RSPB as they attempt to recover the area to its former glory. Restoration in the Lake District. Interview to talk about river restoraion. BBC Radio 4 Open Country/August 2020 Plant thefts are on the rise – and here’s why your garden could be at risk. Interviewed for an article on plant thefts, where I talk about the theft of pyramidal bugle from a remote crag in the Lake District. Telegraph/February 2021 As the competing needs of agriculture and conservation jostle for ascendency, land management in Britain has reached a tipping point. Candid, raw and searingly honest, Lee Schofield offers a naturalist's perspective of the challenges unfolding in the ancient yet ever-changing landscape of Haweswater and shares with us his gloriously vibrant vision for the future. Katharine Norbury

Like the rivers it has rebent, the Haweswater project is re-wiggling farming into a more sustainable alignment with nature. And by similarly refusing to operate in siloed straight lines, Schofield's own journey towards greater collaboration may have lessons to teach both of the UK's rural tribes. * New Statesman *

When Schofield writes about this, it is brilliant and makes for a riveting read. Unfortunately, he is two thirds of the way through the book before he even starts on this topic. The first two thirds is given up to accounts of various situations where he notices the decline in species compared to his childhood, an account of a month's plant hunting in Norway and an account of a family holiday in Italy. All this is interspersed with complaints about local farmers opposing what Schofield is 'trying to do' at Haweswater (except that he never explains what he IS trying to do!) and how he's had to have therapy to boost his self esteem because of the opposition. The project took a leap of faith – to reduce sheep numbers and replace them with cattle and ponies, thus diversifying the grazing regime. At first, these changes were intensely unpopular among the wider community, but there is a slowly dawning realisation that undertaking landscape restoration for public goods such as water quality, flood amelioration and carbon sequestration, as well as the wildlife benefits, is also farming, and deserving of widespread public support at a time when, post-Brexit, agricultural subsidies are under growing scrutiny. This very good book will certainly be in my shortlist of books of 2022 even though we are only in February – it’s that good.

Saving nature is a tough job. In Wild Fell we get to understand why people do it: real soul-deep passion.” As well as I hope this book does, and it has made the Wainwright Longlist, purely selfishly, I hope it doesn't result in a huge influx of visitors to the area. It is an extremely beautiful area, and most readers will want to visit having read this, let's hope they just don't all come at once.. No one person and no one organisation can bring about the necessary change, but Schofield is doing more than most, and the vision he paints, of a fecund, collaborative, ecologically and economically sustainable future, is worth swallowing some pride for on both sides. The ranks of farmers willing to embrace or at least consider change swell year on year, and Lee is supported by a thriving local conservation community.Where eagles dared. Second article in Shadow Species series focuses on golden and white talked eagles. Cumbria Life/July 2020. Version also available as a WildHaweswater post Of tooth and claw. Seventh article in Shadow Species series focuses on wild cats. Cumbria Life/Dec 2020. Version also available as a WildHaweswater post Nilsen, E. B., Milner-Gulland, E. J., Schofield, L., Mysterud, A., Stenseth, N. C., & Coulson, T. (2007). Wolf reintroduction to Scotland: public attitudes and consequences for red deer management. Proceedings. Biological sciences, 274(1612), 995–1002. Accessible online