Wildlife In A Warzone

Army ranges on Salisbury Plain are England’s greatest hidden wilderness, awash with rare species. Ben Hoare sees a vision of England's wildlife-rich past.

Brambles curl around the battered hulk of a wrecked tank, reclaiming it for nature. Its rusting caterpillar tracks are almost hidden in a sea of yellowing grasses and flowers reaching to the horizon in every direction. There’s swathes of wild carrot, wild parsnip, greater knapweed, dyer’s greenweed, lady’s bedstraw, meadow cranesbill, viper’s bugloss, weld, devil’s-bit scabious. Under a hot July sun, the gently rolling landscape thrums with countless grasshoppers and bees. Overhead, skylarks sing and linnets twitter non-stop. Yellowhammer song comes from distant hawthorn scrub. A corn bunting jangles away.

But something is noticeable by its absence. Modern life. There is no traffic noise, no tractors working in fields, not even the sound of passing trains. Also missing are pylons, mobile-phone masts, solar-panel arrays, wind turbines and all the other paraphernalia of a 21st-century countryside. If it weren’t for the decaying military hardware, this idyllic scene could pass for a sleepy backwater in rural France – ‘La France profonde’. Yet this is definitely England. The Ministry of Defence Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) is a place everyone has heard of but relatively few, other than those in uniform, get to explore properly. “Nowhere else in the country looks quite like it any more – and that’s the point,” enthuses MoD ecologist Julie Swain. “This is one of the largest wildernesses we have left in the densely populated, intensively farmed lowland south. It’s becoming a stronghold for more and more species.”

WELCOME TO THE DANGER ZONE