Gareth Fulton

Kings Hill Farm is a riot of activity this morning. By the end of today we should have a bell tent village ready, the wedding barn looking spick and span, three new team members bedded in, a hundred cows dropped off to spend spring and summer on the Reserve and we also have Curlew hatching, part of a recovery project as that species is really struggling, at the moment as well.

Look, that’s a Short-eared Owl over there. They should be breeding on the moorlands and mountains of Northern England or Scandinavia and Russia, but there has been such grass growth this year and therefore lots of field voles here, so we’ve had three pairs stay and breed, which is really rare. I think that’s the first owl I’ve ever seen in the wild. Is it really – that’s great! We’ve now got Short-eared Owls here, seemingly all year round but they should just be a winter bird. We’ve got five pairs of Barn Owls, a Little Owl and a Long-eared Owl. The Long-eared Owl is a woodland bird – we have very few trees but lots of their prey so a pair are breeding here – it’s all about the food, if you provide a habitat rich in food then you get the species. At this time of year everything’s just alive. It’s amazing, I’ve been here a few times now and I get a kind of childish excitement when I drive through the gates – is this your favourite time of year? Probably, although I do like early spring as well because winter is ending and you start to see birds like Lapwing displaying and it’s quite amazing. It is intense for us at this time of year because we’re preparing the summer events spaces and accommodation again, and also it’s the breeding season for our wildlife so lots of surveys, land stewardship work and farming activities all coalesce. I saw what I now know is a Marsh Harrier on the prowl in the sky and smaller birds hassling it, I presume to protect their young? That’s right, that will have been the Lapwings protecting their chicks in the field below.

Can you tell me about the make-up of the land and why it’s so important? The whole place is a wet grassland, that’s a type of wetland which is seasonally (winter-spring) wet and then very dry in the summer. It’s not like open farmland or inland countryside, it’s a very different habitat, fresh water marshland. And as I understand it, this used to be drained farmland – is that right? Yes, the fields on your left now would have been growing wheat. So, what was the process of getting this back to freshwater marshland as it is again now? It would have been salt marsh 400 years ago. Dutch engineers came over in the 17th century and used their skills to help create more farmland. This is what would be called a Dutch polder, really. The sea wall on our right is clay, and that stops the salt water coming in. Imagine the marshes are a big clay bathtub. In the winter, the rainfall fills the bathtub up and in the spring, it starts evaporating and that process creates muddy edges. It’s those muddy edges that feed the birds and their chicks. The whole of this habitat is based around those muddy edges.

That bird in front of you is a Yellow Wagtail. You will see the black and white Wagtails all year round in England, but these birds fly off to the Congo for winter because they feed on flies and insects which we have lots of in spring and summer, but when they die off in the autumn those birds and their off-spring will fly back to Africa. I find this incredible every year – how do they know where to go?

So, farmland was created by taking the salt out of the soil so crops could start growing. After that, the farm alternated between crops and cattle depending on how the price of each compared at any particular time. In the 1970s, the Government pushed farmers to produce more food. They encouraged marshland to be drained in order to grow crops. Philip Merricks, my father-in-law, who is an arable farmer from Romney Marsh, was expanding his farming business at Elmley but then, in the late ‘70s, driven by scientists and books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, we, as a nation, began to realise that we were losing marshland species at an alarming rate. In ‘74, we were down to one breeding pair of Marsh Harriers in the whole country. As a result of that situation, Elmley was designated as a SSSI, Site of Special Scientific Interest and latterly a Wetland of International Importance under the RAMSAR Convention. Out of the 3,200 acres at that time, about 3,000 were designated as SSSI.

…for the last 40 years we’ve been working to restore the land to the best wetland habitat possible and the abundance of rare ground nesting birds shows it’s working.

What the Government was doing, in designating land away from private use to public good, was hugely controversial at the time but Philip dealt with the changes pragmatically. He basically said, if we can no longer do what we were doing, then we’ll work with the marshland in the best way we can. So, for the last 40 years we’ve been restoring the best wetland habitat possible and the abundant ground nesting birds show it’s working, because they’re the ones that are most at risk and most in decline – birds like the Lapwing and the Redshank that you saw when you were driving in. The Marsh Harrier sits at the top of the food chain with the invertebrates and worms in the soil, at the bottom. The Lapwing is in the middle, so if you get it right for the Lapwing, broadly speaking the habitat is right for the whole ecosystem.

The track we’re driving along seems to go on and on with no end in sight. It’s about 6k from one end of the Reserve to the other. There’s a Marsh Harrier there. They’re big birds aren’t they. They have something like a 1.6 metre wingspan. It will be on the hunt for things like ducklings, chicks, rabbits or small birds. That’s a Skylark and there’s a Redshank. Just to give you an idea of the quality of the habitat here – we’ve got around 80 pairs of the Yellow Wagtails that we saw earlier, whereas elsewhere you will be lucky to ever see one in the UK – they are super rare. You seem to know a lot about what’s going on – were you always a bird man? No, I’ve had to learn it on the job but I’m really a novice in comparison to the ornithologists who advise us or visit. We also have Simon, our lead guide and an expert ornithologist – he’s just encyclopedic.

I’m sure it must be incredibly hard at times but I’m feeling envious of your workplace! It is unbelievable. I was interested in nature and farming growing up in rural East Yorkshire so to work in this landscape now is incredible. Look at that, that bird is a Cattle Egret. They have only just started colonising the UK because it’s now warm enough here. They are a physical representation of climate change. They now breed on the Island.

[A herd of cows has parked itself across the road in front of the gate that we are trying to drive through, so Gareth bangs his hand against the side of his jeep to get their attention]

Come on girls! The thing with cows is to not look directly at them if you want them to move. They’re very good at picking up on your body language. If I’m walking around cows, I tend to look away and walk around the outside of them so that they naturally move, but not in a panicked way.

Can you tell me about the economic balance between farming and the Nature Reserve. It’s a compromise, but in essence the habitat requires some degree of managed grazing. The cattle look as though they have just been let out to do what they want, but in reality, we use ditches as hedges so that we can manage the grazing pressure on each area – the cattle are basically a tool to help us manage the habitat. We need a lot of cows to graze 3,000 acres of marsh. We have about 600 from several farms locally – which is a huge herd for South East England – and 800 sheep in the winter. We work with five local farming businesses to graze the marshes after our flock was culled in the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001. Cattle numbers are reducing though which is a challenge. And is that a deliberate move? No, not really. It would be beneficial to have a few less, but not too many. So how has that come about, is it just the result of a lack of demand? No, I think beef sales are relatively stable. The real pressure is just down to economics. It’s very expensive to produce cattle in the UK, especially in the South East where farming is pushed towards arable production or development. We don’t have that as an option here though, because cattle are integral to this landscape. The Government sets a market for protecting wildlife. They will pay an amount per hectare if you undertake certain forms of land management which will benefit the wildlife. Farms will then compare that against what they could earn from growing crops. So, some make the decision to be more wildlife friendly whilst others are more commercially focused and that’s just a rational choice or preference. We don’t need to make that choice here because our whole holding is designated for wildlife. The decision has been made for you. That’s right and actually it’s what we wanted to do. But we haven’t just sat back on that, we have really tried to drive it forward and be the very best we can at what we do.

And, how did you end up in this job – I’m presuming you’re not from farming stock yourself? No, I grew up in rural East Yorkshire, so it’s not as if it was alien to me but my family weren’t farmers. My first career was in the Army – I’d been away a lot for about 8 years and then got a post from the Ministry of Defence in London. You were away where? I was deployed in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan and various other places that the UK was active in during the noughties. That must have taught you a lot of skills that are now useful to you for both farming and running the business. A lot of it was very transferable. Most of it was about using resources to achieve the best possible outcome, having a goal and getting on with it. On the surface, it may look very different, but my role here is actually pretty similar.

Getting back to your question, how did I get from there to here. One of my jobs in the MOD was assisting a general. There was a reception being held by the Prime Minister which my boss was invited to. Frustratingly, it was oversubscribed and my name had therefore been crossed off the guest list but because I knew the security guys there, they let me in. When the lady organising the event noticed I was there, she came over and proceeded to give me an earful for gate crashing – that lady is now my wife. So, if I’m reading this correctly, you had to go on a charm offensive to get things back on track and you obviously managed that! I think the uniform may have had something to do with it as well. Following another six months in the Middle East, I was back in the UK for a while before being posted to Cyprus. Georgina and I had become quite serious by then, so we decided to get married before I left and she came out with me. We had two years there which was amazing, but the army had started to change a lot due to reductions and as a result, my unit was earmarked to be merged with another one, so the MOD were offering redundancies. At that time, part of Elmley was leased by a conservation NGO but that was coming to an end and wasn’t going to get renewed, so Georgina’s Dad asked if we would like to come and help him. He was also keen to explore what opportunities there may be for us here.

So, we came for a visit. I’d never been before – I’d never even heard of it but my first experience was staying in one of the cottages and waking up at sunrise in late winter. It was full of birds and just looked amazing. We were really into travelling then and we just thought it was a no-brainer to do a UK version of what you may get on an African reserve.

So, I left the Army and we moved here. The Reserve manager then was called Steve Gordon, who was an amazing bloke. Great farming and livestock man, brilliant naturalist, could cook, spoke Italian – the ladies loved him! Our plan was to renovate some of the buildings and set up a hospitality business whilst the Reserve would just crack on as normal under Steve’s management. However, within two weeks of us moving back, Steve was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He actually said to me, I’ve got a headache, do you mind running me up to Medway Hospital? They scanned him and asked if he had anyone with him? I sat with him whilst they told him he had a grade 4 brain tumour. That became a pretty seminal moment because he was straight into chemo and the really tough process that goes with that. Steve was basically the man in charge of everything that was going on day-to-day here including the land management, of which there’s a lot to do. So, along with a small but experienced team, we continued the land management to a high standard but there was a lot of learning on the job. Everything was up in the air then – we still didn’t even know if we would get planning permission for the project?

What was that planning application for? For the two traditional shepherd huts. And you were concerned you might not even get that? Yes, because of what we were applying for. Most tourist accommodation near a nature site is on the outside looking in, whereas we were proposing ours to be in the middle of a National Nature Reserve. That created challenges for planning as well as with infrastructure. Added to all this, there had been a wildlife charity here, leasing a fifth of the Estate, with public access for about 30 years. That meant that there was a lot of stakeholders with varying perceptions of what they wanted to happen at Elmley. So, we had to communicate and lead a big cultural change for stakeholders. The message was, we want to maintain public access and restore Kingshill Farm to attract a varied audience and help sustain the Reserve financially. To do that we needed to establish some boundaries and begin some management work to allow it all to happen without negatively affecting our wildlife. And how has that education piece gone down? It’s been really challenging because when people are used to being able to do something, it’s hard if it changes. Just putting a gate up with opening and closing times on was met with huge resistance, but the happy outcome is that ten years later we’ve proven our commitment to maintaining the land, investing in the place and continuing to keep pushing that on, both for the wildlife and for our visitors. We now have over 900 Friends of Elmley who have subscribed to come and have a much deeper relationship with the place. Ten years isn’t really a long time to have achieved that change in culture. I’d agree. I think that we actually got there in six but it was just another additional challenge on top of everything else. Over that time, we also set up a community interest company, which is not-for-profit, and that has helped to show our intent, as well as keeping the public access self-funded, which it needs to be because there’s no other money available for that. It has always been really important for the public to keep coming, but now they also understand that we need support so that we can pay for things like the hides, insurance, communications and wardens.

Is there a happy balance that you are ultimately aiming to achieve between human intervention and the wildlife? Definitely. In the abstract sense, people have got to engage with wildlife otherwise they won’t appreciate it. We all live in our own bubbles and therefore rarely consider it. Friends of mine who have jobs in totally different industries, never wake up in the morning and think anything about the natural world around them. It’s just expected to be there, but unfortunately if we don’t do quite a lot we will continue to lose it. What we’ve got now is nothing like what it was 100 years ago – we’re on a sliding scale.

In my role, I get to sit across business, the social side of things as well as conservation. Most businesses are single spectrum whereas ours is full spectrum, which makes it really interesting. Do you think you would have remained as interested if it wasn’t for that level of diversity? Probably not because it could get a little bit samey. And which of those areas would you say is the most important? They’re all vital, but the public side of what we do is really important because we want people to engage – to understand and value wildlife. If we can do that, then they’ll also value what we do and support it, which is obviously very important to us. We’ve just secured a Heritage Lottery grant which will supercharge the education aspect of what we are doing, and will also support the local community because Sheerness is one of the poorest places in the UK. The grant focusses on getting people out here and giving them a reason to enjoy and be proud of where they live. One of the key things we’ve achieved is going from having no-one from the Island being employed here, to having over 25 within our team all year round, and all of them are super proud of the Reserve.

When we arrived, we knew we had to maintain, and hopefully improve, the wildlife and that we had to keep the public visiting. Balancing those two things is relatively challenging in its own right, but we have also added a commercial hospitality business at Kings Hill Farm. That is needed in order to provide the necessary income and it also allows us to employ lots of local people. What we have also achieved is bringing a whole new segment of society to a national nature zone. People are now choosing to stay here as opposed to other places, because they will see a Marsh Harrier fly over, a Short-eared Owl fly by like you did or a hare sat at the front of their hut – that is super engagement.

The first time I visited the Reserve the sky was slate grey, it was sleeting with rain and shards of sunlight were bursting from behind the clouds over the industrial area in the distance there – nothing like today’s sunshine but incredibly dramatic. I said to myself then, this place is incredible. Yes, it has an edge which gives it something different. It’s not the Cotswolds, it’s not bucolic, it’s quite raw. We’ve got biomass power stations, recycling plants, docks and a wind farm all sitting just beyond our boundary on two sides of the Reserve. One way you look there is green grass as far as you can see and on the other side is reality, the stuff we use but no one cares to look at and I quite like that. Since we’ve been operating the accommodation, I think only two people have ever had a negative comment about that.

Most people say it’s really interesting and makes it more real. Without wanting to name drop, Michael Portillo came here during one of his Railway Journeys and described Sheppey as a bustling mix of industrial and human activity, with commercial industry sitting alongside ordinary people living their lives. He went on to say that as a society, we’ve learnt that we need to protect some areas of land for wildlife, which is basically what Elmley is, in order for everything to be sustainable. At the same time, those areas can’t be ring fenced so no-one is allowed to visit, because that would also do damage.

People are now choosing to stay here as opposed to other places, because they will see a Marsh Harrier fly over, a Short-eared Owl fly by like you did or a hare sat at the front of their hut - that is super engagement.

Is that the farmhouse I can see there? That’s right, it’s called Kings Hill and that’s because in 1688, James II was fleeing the country as William of Orange was set to be crowned instead of him. James’ friend, Sir William Hales, owned Elmley then and was helping him escape to a ship in the Channel. However, before he could get there, he was discovered and arrested by a Faversham magistrate. Upon realising who he was, he had him held in Sir William’s house for two nights whilst they were working out what to do with him.

From the turn of the 19th century through to the First World War, there was a cement and brickworks on the far side of Elmley which had about 200 people working there, more or less in poverty. Oxford University owned the whole estate at that time and they were petitioned to provide a school for the workers’ children. They built a new school for them but the school mistress insisted that they also provide accommodation for her, away from the workers’ hovel and that is the Victorian section you can see on the front of the farmhouse now. The ruins just ahead of us are what’s left of the school house and the brickworks is now a reed bed which is home to an unbelievable amount of wildlife, because it’s just been left for 100 years and allowed to re-wild. There are now 130 Marsh Harriers roosting there in the winter, which is a national record.

You obviously got your original planning application passed – where are you at now in terms of accommodation? We now have ten huts, the farmhouse and the cottage, so we can sleep 40. Then in the summer we also add a tent village, so we can have up to 100 people staying for a night or two but we try to do that in pulses, so it’s not constant, because it’s not good for the visitors but more importantly, for the Reserve. You have brought me to the farmhouse at the end of this tour which has amazing views across the whole reserve. From this elevated position we can see just how close the sea is and how little protection there is for the fresh water marshland. Are you ever concerned about flooding? Every winter we’re one storm away from being left with a farm of just 100 acres. The sea used to come all the way up to the hill over there. We are doing our best to preserve this land and its habitat, and we have also started to prepare other areas further inland that we can fall back to if that time ever comes. As I say, a lot of what we are doing is about education and awareness – the quicker we can deliver that, the more time we will all have to enjoy this beautiful place.