Nature thrives with our care

The open areas are maintained as a wildlife meadow.

This means that the grasses and wild plants are allowed to grow long during the summer and then at the end of the year the grass is mown and flailed.

Wildlife meadows and hay meadows are a diminishing habitat and I think the Friends of Lancing Ring showed remarkable common sense to object to plans to change 60 years of meadow and change it to a pasture which would be detrimental.

This does not mean anybody can rest on their laurels, because if the management is just neglect the woody scrub will take over.

If any improvement is to be made, it would require an environment assessment of the nature interest.

Nobody has attempted to produce a scientific management plan.

I have recorded some of the immense numbers of butterflies, notably the common blue, marbled white and wall brown and a total species number of more than 30 butterflies.

There is also a rich variety of grassland mushrooms.

If you want to see what rough pasture looks like, you can go to Southwick Hill or Anchor Bottom where cattle have changed the fauna and flora completely to a sparser, rough pasture habitat and wiped out thousands of butterflies, and these areas a have much-reduced variety of wild plants.

Andy Horton

Via email.

Lancing Ring nature website: www.glaucus.org.uk/LancRin2005.htm