A wildlife haven that needs protecting

Surely we should all bear in mind the remarkable advantage of St Mary’s Lands to the town, giving easy access for townspeople and visitors to the countryside. The leasing occupants: the racecourse and sub leased nine hole golf course are responsible tenants and benign neighbours to the land’s natural residents; a varied wildlife community that has the proper right of tenancy and no vote at council meetings. Much is made these days of the need to preserve and foster the natural world, with which few people have opportunity to have contact, but is sitting literally on Warwick’s western door step.

It is worth looking briefly at the permanent residents of St Mary’s Lands. Pre asphalted car park at the Saltisford Gate, flocks of goldfinches could be seen here regularly in the spring, and early risers might have glimpsed muntjac deer breakfasting on the bordering blackberry bushes. A kestrel used regularly to hunt over the long grass on the edge of the racecourse track, all these have all now been replaced by parked cars, that ubiquitous metal aphid. The variety of bird life includes the once prominent Skylark. Older Warwick residents tell of clouds of these birds once resident on the racecourse, today visitors are lucky to see even one. ‘Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight’ now hardly even that. Owls, woodpeckers and cuckoos are still to be heard and seen near Gog Brook.

Hedgehogs, foxes, bats even badgers live on the lands, the latter a rare sight and even rarer if the Government’s ‘difficult decision’ to cull them is allowed to go ahead. Both the Saltisford and Gog Brooks are home to fish and amphibians. Yearly hundreds of tiny toads migrate into the safety of the central area long grass, to the satisfaction of the herons that occasionally fish in the two small ponds located in the centre of the racecourse.

St Mary’s Lands are too important to the well being of its permanent residents and that of Warwick’s Townspeople to become yet another opportunity for property development. It is to be hoped that in the event of an appeal by the planning applicant, due regard by the appeal’s inspector is given to it’s irreplaceable natural value, and that this modern enclosure is further refused. - Richard Warner, Cocksparrow Street, Warwick.