The beauty of nature

I love the big skies and light here in North Norfolk, part of God’s own county! Even, almost especially, in winter, at dusk or at dawn, it’s magical. Particularly on Holkham beach, beneath a leaden sky at sunset, when the sea is a darker shade of grey and the sand is a little lighter.

Tom Coke succeeded to the title of Earl of Leicester in May 2015. He has overseen the diversification of Holkham Estate away from its dependence on agriculture and chairs Wildlife Farms and Estates England.  In 2021 he was voted into the House of Lords taking up a seat as an Hereditary Peer and currently sits on the Environment and Climate Change Committee.

This might sound somewhat melancholic, but I am a fan of German romantic painters, like Caspar David Freidrich (1774–1840), whose work conveys a subjective and often

emotional response to the natural world. You get a great sense of that, particularly on a moonlit night.

The immense beauty of our natural landscapes inspires a sense of awe and a profound, intrinsically conservative sense of duty to conserve our natural world for future generations.

This most manifests itself for me in the protection of the Holkham National Nature Reserve (NNR), which stretches across nearly 10,000 acres of marshland and foreshore from Burnham Norton to Blakeney. It’s wild and rich with flora and fauna and is the largest NNR in Norfolk and arguably the most important in England.

The central part of it is situated on the estate and has been

managed in–hand by our Holkham team since 2012 when Natural England’s license expired. As it was the most visited location on our land, we felt strongly that we should take responsibility for its management, and we were confident that we would be more effective for a number of reasons.

Prime amongst them was that, as a small organisation we could, and would, make decisions. Too often large third sector NGOs or government departments prevaricate over making decisions. But in so doing they should realise they have made a decision not to make a decision. We have a small but well–informed management team who generally make the right calls. On the odd occasion we make the wrong decision, we soon know about it and take immediate steps to rectify it. The worst thing is to make no decision at all, that simply leads to stasis and is terribly morale sapping for members of the team. From the days of my military training it has stayed with me that it is far better to be a leader motivated by hope for success than by fear of failure.

We made the decision early on, that all legal methods of predator species control would be undertaken on the NNR, in an attempt to ensure over wintering wildfowl and waders, but particularly the fledglings of springtime breeding birds, had the best chance of surviving through to adulthood. We don’t try to hide this fact lest we upset people’s sensitivities, but we add it to the narrative as part of the continuous education of our visitors. It always perplexes me that many conservation organisations talk in terms of the number of nests. That counts for nothing if the young are all predated which is so often the case. It is fledglings that survive to adulthood that count.

I don’t think anyone benefits from a plethora of signage in the countryside, but where we do have interpretative signs we credit our visitors with intelligence and do not dumb down messages. When I talk to visitors I sense this is always appreciated.

The importance of these conversations is only growing. We live in an increasingly urban society with less than one percent of our population living and working in the countryside. The knowledge gap is cavernous and social entitlement to land is increasing. However, at the same time, there is at last a growing awareness of the benefits nature and the countryside can have on our health and wellbeing. There certainly is a newfound appetite to connect with nature and our work highlights the role private enterprise can play in this. We do our best to welcome visitors and encourage them to learn about nature, and crucially to respect it.

As a farmer it’s not surprising that I also love the working landscape. Norfolk is the ‘bread basket of England’. I appreciate the farmed landscape for its mosaic of hedges, field margins and the patchwork created by the increasing variety of crops grown here. We operate a six–course rotation system with all the cereals, but also featuring sugar beet, potatoes, onions, beans and have recently introduced 18 and 24 month grass and clover leys into the arable rotation.

More and more farmers are transitioning to regenerative agricultural practices, the sort of farming pioneered in the Agricultural Revolution toward the end of the 18th century. Increasingly the fields are not solely yellow with cereals, but filled with a spectrum of colour, from the vibrant crimson clover to the delicate lavender blue of phacelia. And, because we follow a regenerative agricultural system, there’s more green cover throughout the year, thanks to cover (or catch) crops with a mix of carbon sequestering and nitrogen catching plants, such as vetch, buckwheat and oilseed radish. I believe in generating natural capital and allowing a variety of plants to thrive and complement each other, rather than a monoculture, in one field. It is this variety that helps to promote biodiversity, nature loves “edge” – where different habitats meet. This system also restores our natural landscapes to how our ancestors would have experienced them, with the diversity adding to the interest and beauty.

As part of this, we’ve also reintroduced livestock into the landscape, with almost 1,000 beef cattle from spring to autumn grazing on the nature reserve’s freshwater marshes. It’s so peaceful to sit and watch these colourful, large ruminants, peacefully grazing their way across the landscape. And that is what we must encourage visitors to do, to stop, sit quietly and watch the view. When you do that, things start to

happen. You start to notice tiny songbirds flitting between branches as they deliver their shrill yet melodious songs, and butterflies blown on the breeze as they search out nectar from multivarious flowers.

The cattle and our flock of 600 sheep grazing on the cover crops not only evoke a pastoral scene that’s remained unchanged for centuries, they also provide all sorts of biodiversity benefits, not least as they are returning goodness to the soil through their muck which is so beneficial to the invertebrates at the bottom of the food chain. It’s no wonder that my four–times–great–grandfather, Coke of Norfolk, a pioneering agriculturist of the Agricultural Revolution and Whig MP for 50 years, described sheep as ‘the golden hoof’.

But behind all these pretty quilted patchworks of fields, of wildlife corridor hedges and margins, and of the bucolic beauty of gentle ruminants, there is a very progressive farming business that is data–driven and science–led. We are not organic farmers, indeed organic farming only accounts for two to three percent of the famed land in Britain, but we are reducing our use of artificial nitrogen without significant yield penalty, and in 2021 didn’t use any insecticides. The latest “toy” on the farm is a huge 36 metre wide sprayer that hascameras on the boom next to the spray nozzles that we are training to differentiate between crops and weeds. This is saving (depending on crop) up to 70 percent usage of agri–chemicals. An economic saving and a biodiversity gain.

But all is not rosy in the countryside. There are increasing political threats. This ideological Labour Government’s tax policies are becoming more punitive, and vindictively directed at people they either do not like and certainly do not seem to understand. They are threatening long–term stability which is never good for anyone. Regulations are becoming more top–down and restrictive, reducing autonomy and decision making and are often conflicting. Government green economic incentives to farmers, land managers and landowners are being cut and lack consistency, creating competition for bottom line value propositions.

Sadly current legislators believe that environmental regulations and enforcement are the quick route for the Government to tick a box for nature and climate targets. But just because land is designated doesn’t actually mean it is going to remain in good order, it is voluntary, bottom–up action that will deliver.

Managing the landscape properly takes real dedication. I’m particularly proud of the way we manage forestry on the estate. The woodland is well looked after with 80 percent in continuous cover forestry. Forestry and the landscape doesn’t happen by accident.

The management of deciduous forestry in England is generally not a money–making exercise, though I’m pleased that our seven man (in fact five men and two women) team washes its face as we prune and thin our woods on a regular seven year cycle, usually taking 30 percent of the mass of the trees out with each thin. This creates butterfly glades, excellent for letting light into the ground storey, encouraging biodiversity and, crucially from a forestry point of view, encouraging quicker growth of the remaining timber, which of course captures carbon in the growing wood of the tree, and sequesters more in the ground through its huge root system.

A good thin also promotes increased ventilation through the remaining trees which reduces the chance of disease. This process of regular thinning encourages a multi–aged, more “natural” wood. A few of the trees will be mature and worth good money and will be used in construction or furniture making and they help pay for the whole process. All of the above leave a well–managed and attractive wood which will sit in the landscape for hundreds of years.

That is of the utmost importance to custodians of the countryside, people like me, who want to leave a legacy. Our sense of connection to those who lived before and who will come after us is at the heart of conservatism, a philosophical underpinning present in the works of great thinkers from Edmund Burke to Roger Scruton. When I think of an appropriate homage to my ancestors and a legacy to set my descendants on a prosperous and secure path, there are few things more vital, beautiful and sacred to bequeath than a flourishing natural world.

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Views expressed in this chapter are those of the author, not necessarily those of the Conservative Environment Network.