Waxcaps and Sheep

The lawn in my garden has been a fine place for fungi in recent weeks. My neighbour's too. Some of the fungi have been waxcaps. Waxcaps on grassland tend to come later than the woodland fungi associated with trees.

I mention this because of the treeless pasture area blighted by sheep grazing on Blacka. If you ask SWT's managers or Natural England's local rep why this sheep-blighted zone is a SSSI they will be likely to say it's because of waxcap mushrooms. This is fairly new. They didn't say this in the past when the SSSI designation was first introduced. But now they do. This is interesting. They've discovered the waxcaps after the designation, not before.  Hmm. The other thing about the waxcaps is that they claim it's necessary to graze with livestock otherwise the waxcaps will not be conserved. Why? My lawn is not a SSSI. Waxcaps are on my lawn and no livestock graze. Another good place to find waxcaps is in churchyards where livestock do not graze.

As it costs a considerable amount of public money to graze livestock on this land and the sheep destroy what would otherwise be a wonderful display of wild flowers, how can they justify this management? I challenged the SWT manager on this. He said that Sheffield's ecology officer had said the droppings from sheep and cows are essential for the fungi. Now this can't be true. Not only have I seen research showing that waxcaps are mycorrhyzal - depending on a relationship with the roots of grasses - but the evidence of my lawn and churchyards disproves this.

So again we get to the real reason for sheep and cattle here - it brings in farm grants. Nothing to do with nature reserve priorities. As for wanting short grass for the spores to disperse, a couple of people with scythes on carefully selected parts of the grassland in September would be thousands of times cheaper for the public purse and would safeguard a fine display of wild flowers; and no sheep and no livestock pens and no fences.