Little Duxmore Farm on the outskirts of Havenstreet has been purchased by the Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, it has been announced.
The 100-acre farm off Rowlands Lane is to become the Trust’s first re-wilding site, as well as becoming the Island base for the charity. The purchase goes a long way towards the vision for a ‘wilder wight’ and the ambition to double the Trust estate by 2030.
There will be a mixed approach to the site, working with existing features and site geology. The area lends itself to chalk downland restoration, wetland creation and woodland creation. One of the key aspects will be transitional habitats and letting nature take the lead.
Animals such as cattle and pigs are expected to roam the site with a ‘hands-off’ approach by the Trust, letting the grazing animals live naturally across Little Duxmore.
Little Duxmore Farm was recently listed on the open market with an asking price of £950,000.
How lovely. Stopped houses being built.
At least there, hopefully.
As the site was sold with planning for a large house, who will benefit from ‘that’?
Will all those kindly people raising funds for such charities, imagining whilst doing so, they are giving their hard earned to save or care for wildlife, when, in reality IF so, a large proportion will go to let the charity higher level staff live in luxury at their expense, siting reason as ‘it is vital to be on site at all times etc’ to justify such?
One hopes not, but as with many charities those at the top often do very very well from those kind hearted people at the bottom giving what they can’t easily afford to do.
NOT saying that this will be the case here, but ‘watching’ with great interest.
I love wildlife and anything that promotes the protection or creation of lost habitats but where people are involved then one has to be realistic.
PS, there ‘other site’ at Knighton down has at least one, or maybe now two low end caravans with someone living in such at the car park on the Brading downs road.
Perhaps they could get these removed before it becomes a travellers park, with the ruination of that area.
Unfortunately they will have to apply to the courts to evict them, such as what happened at the Firestone Copse car park.
It’s nice to hear some good news amidst all the doom and gloom.
Thank goodness nasty grabbing greedy property developers haven’t got their grubby hands on this piece of land to build all the “much needed” homes for all the people who want to move here to live, when the Island is already vastly overcrowded, especially in Ryde.
So well done to Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, I hope you, and similar organisations can acquire much more land to protect on our beleaguered Isle. (Rapidly turning into a concrete isle, so this is such welcome news and goes some small way to redress the balance.)
Roger, I think the general idea of such charities is to protect endangered species amongst other aims.
With such in mind, if housing were to happen then perhaps the indigenous British should be at the front of the queue now.
To me it would be almost equally as lovely to see working Island and indeed British farms, producing food, milk, or whatever, as we used to do here.
Conservation and real farming can go hand in hand, and perhaps that is what will happen as they are going to have livestock.
Yet there is a BIG difference in farming and being self sufficient, to ‘playing’ at such using charity funds to keep the whole project ‘going’ which without a constant funding would go to the wall like so many real working farms sadly have.
It saddens me to see those huge tractors and trailers and farmers being paid just to grow crops to be cut and turned into gas at Arreton all heavily subsidised by the EU, hence it is now owned by a German firm so it can continue once we are out of the EU.
It would never ‘pay’ without such a grant, think of the massive cost of the machinery the wages of drivers etc, and with dozens of fuel hungry tractors hardly ‘green’.
The UK should grow more of it’s own food now, we have really fertile soil, good growing climate, free wind power to grow in greenhouses in less productive sites or times of the year.
That would provide work, profit for the UK and ease our imports of foreign food thus being green, much more benefit than playing at such, and would ease pressure from council to build on everything to gain more council tax to enlarge ‘the pot’ so when they ‘take more’ out it doesn’t look quite so bad.
Perhaps that ‘is’ the problem, an acre of land ‘surprisingly’ given planning is no longer worth ten thousand agriculture land price, but million plus. A nice little earner for the owner, and anyone the owner wishes to thank for their help would be unlikely to fall on ‘deaf’ ears.
Very well said Jay. It’s heart breaking to have seen the demise of Agriculture on the Island.
well done