Berry Head

Torbay’s Biggest Heritage Site

How Ivan the Lone Ranger is Putting Cow-pats back on the Dung-beetles’ Menu

Berry Head is Torbay’s single most important heritage site. It has got more official international and national designations than most places see in a lifetime.

Try these for size: Scheduled Ancient Monument (the Napoleonic Forts); Site of Special Scientific Interest (geology and flora); Area of Special Protection (the Guillemot colony); Special Area of Conservation (the colony of Greater Horseshoe bats); Local Nature Reserve (wildlife and geology); and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (its importance in the landscape).

At the same time it is a Country Park with over 200, 000 visitors a year – and the job of juggling all these heritage assets as well as making sure the site is welcoming to visitors goes to Countryside Ranger Ivan Lakin.

Ivan‘s first priority has been to update the botanical and other wildlife records for the site.

This meant crawling around on hands and knees during much of June and July, counting the populations of extremely rare but equally tiny plants that struggle for survival on the thin limestone soils of Berry Head. Plants like Small Hare’s Ear (flowers only one millimetre across) and Small Restharrow, both of which are only found in one or two other places in the whole of the UK.

These plants aren’t just rare – they are almost extinct in this country, and Torbay is the place they call home. Ivan has begun a programme of scrub clearance and grassland management to improve the habitat for these extremely choosy plants.

But the work doesn’t stop at plants. The colony of rare Greater Horseshoe bats which roosts in the Quarry has been much in the news recently because it is counted as the most fragile colony in the whole of the South West.

These bats depend upon dung-beetles for food at critical times during the year – and dung-beetles in turn need cow-pats. Not just any cow-pats, but freshly laid ones at that! In the past year there has been a decline in grazing in the vicinity of Berry Head and this year the colony is in crisis, with little food available for the young bats when they first fly.

Ivan has been helping to put together a rescue package to re-introduce grazing on part of the Head so that fresh cow-pats are once again on the menu for the local dung-beetles. Come spring 1999 a small herd of North Devon Reds, a very docile breed of cattle, will be munching their way through the grass and scrub (but not the rare wild flowers!)