It’s 2052 – 30 years after the purchase of Wilder Pentwyn Farm and the beginning of Radnorshire Wildlife Trust’s 30-year journey to build a new model farm for the uplands of mid-Wales. Their aspiration was to build out from the farm, starting on Cnwch Bank, part of the Beacon Hill common that they owned. Then onto and out in to the Hills of East Radnorshire and what was, at the time, termed the Wilder Marches – a landscape recovery programme working across country with 3 other Wildlife Trusts and a variety of partners. 

I’m on the Heart of Wales Line Trail, a long-distance footpath created in 2020, running alongside what was once a quiet railway line.  Busier now, as more people move about by public transport, from their bases in Wales where remote working is common, thanks to high-speed broadband, local rail and bus connections, the rise of the e-bike and changing workplace culture. The small towns and communities here are vibrant and well serviced. 

I’ve come to know this path well, now retired I walk it even more, often with my son, now 36. 

The landscape has changed far beyond our wildest dreams.  It’s certainly true that things got worse before they got to this point. Global carbon emissions are now on a clear downward trajectory and the UK has just met its ‘6th carbon budget’ target with a 78% drop in emissions since 1990 seen in 2035. [1]

It’ll still take several decades to see the positive difference in the climate because the existing carbon will keep us warming until global CO2 emissions hit net zero; albeit this is now at slower rate than seen in the past. Here in mid Wales, we’ve seen some changes, which on paper, don’t always seem that significant, but they have been.  There is real day-to-day impact on how we live, what we grow and how we manage water. 

Average annual temperature for Radnorshire for the 2040s are +1.2C above the 1961-90 average. [2]

Average summer rainfall has dropped by around 6% and winter rainfall increased by around 4% on average, but the variability we now experience sees extremes where summer rainfall has dropped by 25% and winter rain up by 15%.  The warmer, drier summers were welcomed by many at first – Wales was famous as a classic location for a damp summer camping holiday, but with 70% of UK water supply falling on the hills and mountains, it soon became apparent that even on this mild, fairly tame and temperate island, we needed to seriously adapt how we live.  Water management is now a far more serious industry, featuring far more in public discourse.  Restrictions are common in summer and even winter.  Fine if you were never one for washing your car every week!  Joking aside, water is no longer cheap.  And the way we grown food and store water within the landscape has had to change subtly, but dramatically.  Thankfully, with greater local decision making powers through the 2030’s as politics shifted away from centralised power, Wales chose to invest in large numbers of small scale storage solutions and manage water by holding it on the hills.  

Despite this, we’re seeing a big impact on wet-loving species like mosses in the summer due to the reduced rainfall. Our precious peatlands, are really struggling where full-scale restoration has not been carried out.  Degraded peat bogs and mires struggle to maintain their sphagnum communities, but the restored peats are doing very well and managing to withstand the hotter drier summers and increased wildfire risk. [3]

I’m coming up to the top of Pentwyn on the north side approaching Cnwch bank.  I’ve walked past a thriving market gardening business, with its polytunnels, indoor growing space and small pop-up restaurant.   

There’s green camping in the bottom field, with compost loos.  With children running through the ford, laughing wildly.  The water runs cleaner and more consistently year-round since management of the moorland changed to hold water back. 

There are no fences internally at Wilder Pentwyn Farm, but there are some fantastic rambling hedges, in-field trees and scrub, which shift around flower rich grassland that is grazed by a mixture of traditional cattle and hardy pigs and ponies. The stock are fitted with GPS collars, which set virtual fences, allowing stock to be managed in more closely, focussing their time on the most wildlife-rich habitats are the right time of year.  This simple technological change has made a huge difference to wildlife.  It’s also changed the economics of land management, as there’s less need for fencing, less need to round stock from high up on the hills – you can bring them down using the collars over a week or so, and checking takes far less time as the GPS locates them for you. The day is early, and the sun is warming.  The buzz of insects is loud, insects leap and fly up as you walk through the scruffy grassland.  Birdsong is deafening, increasing year on year as the landscape has become wilder.  Abundance is back.  Many grew up not knowing they had missed it.  The baseline has shifted.  On this occasion for the better – no longer a syndrome, shifting baseline is a remedy and a sign of positive actions.  

Topping out and the view to the east has changed remarkably.  There’s more arable in the landscape now – grown through regenerative farming techniques involving minimal tillage and very little external inputs, Nutrients come from legumes fixing nitrogen and farm-yard manure.  Finally, we are seeing a reduction in the embedded Phosphorous in the soil, thanks to the massive reduction in chicken manure spread on the land from local intensive poultry farms, which are far less common now.  Nutrient reduction has also come from a decrease in livestock numbers as farming and food production has diversified.  These changes,  have transformed the once beleaguered river Wye and its tributaries. The shifts in climate mean it is more at risk of algal blooms in summer [4] but due to a big drop in pollution levels from 2022, it’s manageable and there is more shading along our river network by trees to help keep river temperatures cooler. As water security and storage has become much more critical, there are 100’s more ponds and lakes in the landscape, with wetlands in nearly all the valleys, helping to catch and slow water that falls in the hills.

There’s still plenty of livestock in the landscape, more cattle, and free-range pigs with traditional hardy ponies roaming the hills.  Regenerative farming and horticulture have seen small flocks of ducks and geese return as people seek natural pest control techniques, now the pesticides that remain in use are so costly, thanks to the externalities to the environment being incorporated into the cost of purchase. The flocks provide rich meat and eggs, as well as plenty of entertainment when you walk through farm steads!  It’s curious how herd diversity shifted back to something akin to the 1950’s. 

Chickens are kept in much smaller number, with many of the industrial sheds erected for them in the early 2000’s being converted to indoor fruit and vegetable businesses.  Farm businesses are truly mixed again. 

The landscape contains wind turbines, big and small, generating electricity for the grid and for battery storage, going to communities who own and control it and also out  to far wider populations.  Solar panels gleam from rooftops and yards. 

Agroecological farming – once just a brave new term – characterises the view.  In-field trees of nuts, fruit and timber, form a parkland and wood pasture landscape, providing more income opportunities and much needed soil stability.  Not to mention buffering from the heavy storm events and shade for cattle, ponies and pigs in the height of the summer heat, which now frequently reaches temperatures of 40^oC and more.

It's April and the flush of spring flowers is coming to an end – winter’s now being shorter.  But my, what a flush. 

As we break out onto Cnwch Bank a Bee-eater flies over, now common, having moved up from the continent due to the warmer temperatures.

Cnwch, it’s cool in the shadow of the hill, as we dip down into the ravine.  Water Crowfoot flowers white in the channel – a great indicator of cleaner waters - with shining bright goblets of yellow from Globeflower lining the wet margins.  The reduction in sheep has seen these magnificent flowers return.  Without heavy grazing pressure they move up and down the river catchment, their seed distributed in floods.  The seeds take ground in the dynamic and shifting gravel channels that we’ve started to give far more space too, as canalised banks of rivers were broken in the 2030’s.  This shift came following severe and hugely disruptive storms and subsequent floods, following intense winter rainfall that saw water thundering off the tightly grazed hills. 

Over the brow now, and the moor opens up ahead.  The vista more complex and varied.  We draw deeper breaths and pause to take stock.  A Black grouse flies up, its  cackling call peeling out over heather, cotton grass, and scrub. Black grouse are once again the common grouse of the hills and uplands.  They do well in the more extreme weather we experience, thanks to the habitat changes we’ve seen for water and climate, but also because of active management for them.  This is particularly noticeable in years with very strong downpours in June which are a big risk to new chicks [5]. The best way to describe what we see is an upland savanna of trees – wood pasture like, shaped by wind and rain – and scrub of many shapes and sizes.  Sometimes in clumps, sometimes in scattered drifts.  For wildlife this complexity has been paradise.  Nectar, seed, and insects living within it provide food year-round, increasing bird numbers and facilitating the return of species like Red-backed Shrike. 

What was once burned, bashed and mown is now grazed and rootled by cattle, pigs and ponies. To think we once burned this peaty and shallow- soiled land.  Once feared gorse and scrub, which has now returned to the landscape providing vital habitat for wildlife.  It takes time to change and for a new normal to set in.  But a few leaders of change – progressive farmers and landowners who saw their long lineage and connection with the land threatened by runaway climate change and severe loss of wildlife, acted.  Working together, with the community and the Wildlife Trusts a new movement was built.  

We drop down again into what was once molinia and not much else.  Marsh violets and their purple hews run through the grassland, with butterbur, sundew and asphodel, not yet ready to flower.  The small streams and runnels that feed into the Lugg have been blocked and filled with leaky dams.  There aren’t huge amounts of peat up here, but what there is has been well managed and plays a vital role in holding back water, which helps alleviate flooding further downstream.

There’s more broad-leaved woodland and in particular high forest around in the valleys and sheltered locations now.  The National Forest for Wales inspired much tree planting, thankfully plenty of it was native broadleaved species.  This has resulted in an increase in temperate rainforest area- that wonderfully rich and textural habitat that glows green with moss and lichen on even the darkest of winter days.  In the early 2020’s this precious, culturally important woodland, had reduced to just 1% of its former cover and potential.  Following concerted efforts from the environment sector and a few champions of change we’ve seen this reversed.  The richest habitat is still found a bit further west from here, but there are some wonderful examples in the stepper valleys and gorges of the Wye catchment right over into England.  It enchants people in ways that few lowland habitats can.  Thankfully, in these recently restored and created woodlands most of the tree species are doing well in the changing conditions because of the work done at the time of planting to check future climatic suitability and ensure the right trees were planted, or allowed to regenerate, in the right place for then and now.

Curlew bubble across the hills.  They were predicted to become extinct in Wales by 2035, but large-scale changes to the uplands came just in time.  More wet ground, more varied vegetation and more insects helped.  Increases in Hen harrier and Goshawk helped push crows and jackdaw numbers down, with both species less common now there is so much more variety in the landscape. Removing the perceived need for constant control that once was a commonly held tradition. Sure, there’s still predation and curlew chicks are lost, but nature is raw.  And this is the living example of a properly functioning web of life – natural processes, brought alive from text to a living and breathing, everyday system. 

It's a busy landscape.  Of people too.  Market gardening and agroecology provide more jobs.  And people are here walking, cycling, horse riding and relaxing. This area is still sparsely populated, but it’s readily accessible to over 10 million people in South Wales and the West Midlands.   Tourism and hospitality remain the strongest part of the rural economy.  Hotels, cottages, pubs and restaurants all provide a market for local produce. Local services are better utilised and the income allows people living here year round to earn good wages from a mix of professions – practical work, and work on the land is, if anything, as valuable now as it ever has been, for all of the technological changes we’ve seen.   Access has long been better in Wales than England, and after the great discovery of mid Wales in the pandemics of the 2020’s and 30’s people never stopped coming here – more so now the landscape is so rich, so full of life, colour and variety. 

Farms are better supported. Prices at farmgate are fairer, as people came to realise just how damaging ‘cheap’ food was.  You just don’t hear people say things like “well, people need cheap chicken”. Once the polluter pays principle was widely adopted and enforced cheap chicken no longer existed.  Inspections, monitoring and support are regular, happening many times each year on every farm.  Finally recognising that the land is something we all have a stake in and that sustainable food production within the UK was a vitally important industry. 

This reframing of the value held within the land and the love of the landscape that has been extended and deepened is now benefitting what were the future generations when we started out with our vision for Pentwyn and Cnwch.  Public benefits are now a lived experience and sustainable food and job creation lead to rural prosperity. The landscape is busy.  Busy with people: living and working.  And busy with nature. 

- James Hitchcock, Chief Executive Officer, Radnorshire Wildlife Trust

[1] source Sixth Carbon Budget - Climate Change Committee (theccc.org.uk)

[2] (based on central estimate for a 25km grid square centred on Radnorshire for a RCP6.0 scenario). Source Welcome to UKCP (metoffice.gov.uk)

[3] CCRA3-Chapter-3-FINAL.pdf (ukclimaterisk.org)

[4] CCRA3-Chapter-3-FINAL.pdf (ukclimaterisk.org)

[5] Site-based adaptation reduces the negative effects of weather upon a southern range margin Welsh black grouse Tetrao tetrix population that is vulnerable to climate change | SpringerLink