Pevensey Levels

Tuesday 4th July 2023

Shaun picked me at 08:30 and we drove over to the Pevensey Levels to do assessments of three farms. When farmers put in their applications to the Rural Payments Agency for various schemes some of the farms are chosen for an sessment - to check that what they are applying for is suitable for the land they have. These three farmers have all put in for GS9 and GS10 - land for wading birds. The levels are amazing I havent driven through them before, an enormous area of ditches and streams put in place to drain the land and allow it to be farmed. There arent many road or people about! It was really interesting and I learnt what to look out for - what good looked like and what and looked like! There was a lot of floating pennywort - see middle picture - this is an invasive species and I dont think they will be bale to so anything about it. The worst field was the one on the right - this is a SSSI! It looks like the farmer had used glysophate to clear the land and then replanted with grass - given that it is protected land it is appalling. We also saved a sheeps life! He had managed to fall in one of the ditches and was drowning - he couldnt get out and his feet couldnt touch the bottom. Luckily he was not fully grown so between the two of us we managed to pull him out - he was very lucky there is noone else around and if we hadnt happened to pass then he only had a few minutes left!