Rare plants and vandals

Battles in conservation often means protecting rare plants and battling with incnsiderate people, if not vandals. Bill Clark had his own unorthodox solutions.

Photo from PxHere

Extracts from a podcast reading of Bill Clark's 'Route and Branch'. full podcast here:
https://archive.org/download/plants-and-people/Ch8e-Plants-and-people.mp3

Besides my conservation friends not being too keen on my seeding of the new meadow, they did not agree with moving wild plants – even on the same site. Dr Walters was aghast, when he found out that I had moved the last two pyramid orchids growing along a path edge, to a safer place after five had been stolen – I got their number back up to eleven before I retired, but sadly, later management has lost them all!

William Palmer, who I could call a friend almost from the day of my arrival, once told me what he thought in no uncertain terms. Hurrying towards me, he called, ‘Bill, Bill. You have had the vandals in again! Next to where you have been tree planting, they have dug up every one of the 39 belladonna seedlings that I counted the other day.’ ‘It’s all right William,’ I replied, ‘it was me, they were too close to the footpath – you know how poisonous they are – I have replanted them out of sight: hopefully most of them will survive.’ A look of anguish came over William’s face, ‘Oh Bill, Belladonna is so rare; and there are more than enough people in the world.’

Apropos the trouble I so often had with people, I suppose I should have agreed with him.

One early incident concerned a man thieving from the parked cars. Despite chasing him on foot, then trying to block in his speeding car, which bounced off mine, leaving a large dent and scrapes all along the side of his, he got away. Because of my detailed description he was later picked up by the Suffolk Police, to whom he confessed to some years of breaking and entering vehicles. Up to the end of the 1980s in particular, gangs of rowdy youths were still causing mayhem.

One such was well after midnight – for the fourth weekend in a row – the noise of screeching vehicle tyres, shouts and screams were coming from the car park. Leaving Wendy to phone the police, I raced down, and was just in time to see three sets of rear-lights disappearing through the trees. As I dashed back in for the tractor keys, Wendy called, ‘The police are on their way.’ I drove the tractor out into the reserve – lights off – to look for the cars lights.

Gauging their route from the distant beams, I reversed the tractor into some shrubs at the side of a track; zooming out, as a Mini sped along. It hit the big back wheel of the tractor spot on! Pandemonium ensued as three cars tried to reverse, turn, and get away, hitting trees, and probably one another.

The first police car arrived as I drove into the car park, and I informed the constable that the, ‘birds have flown,’ and confessed to my ‘accident’ with them. His face looked serious in the light of my headlights, then, grinning from ear to ear, he said, ‘Oh Mr Clark, I do wish I had been there!’ It was most satisfying in the light of day, to see the amount of headlight and rear light glass, strewn along the path.

Readings continue with Inner City School visit to Wandlebury https://routeandbranch.blogspot.com/2020/06/inner-city-school-visit-to-wandlebury.html