A shower of rain finds Nipstone Rock. After days of oppressive heat, there\u2019s a scent released from the heath: peaty earth, heather, glistening stone. Smell is an associative sense and, like a shared memory, we\u2019re returned to a place from an earlier age that is refreshed \u2013 innocent yet fiercely \u201csingular\u201d, as Tom Wall, who was the first warden of the Stiperstones national nature reserve (NNR), puts it.<\/p>\n
This feeling of restoration is why we\u2019re here. Rain dampens a group of conservationists at the Nipstone Rock, but not their enthusiasm to celebrate new additions to the Stiperstones NNR, tripling its size. Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, says the extended Stiperstones is number 11 of the 25 new NNRs<\/a> that are being created under the \u201cKing\u2019s series\u201d banner. The series marks a change: from 70\u00a0years of traditional protection of remnants of wildlife habitats to a focus on the ecological restoration of landscapes and creating a jigsaw of places for communities and the natural world.<\/p>\n This is nature restoration based on the \u201cLawton principles\u201d of bigger, better, more and joined-up habitats, making them resilient ecological networks. Here, we\u2019re celebrating in particular the inclusion of the Middle Marches Community Land Trust\u2019s new sites at Minsterley Meadows \u2013 which hold 5,000 green-winged orchids, and Norbury Hill, a crucial stepping stone between the upland heaths of the Stiperstones and the Long Mynd \u2013 in the Stiperstones NNR<\/a>. A remarkable achievement for a community organisation<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Nipstone Rock 25 years ago, I reported on a restoration scheme called \u201cBack to Purple\u201d. Then, a plantation of conifers was felled, a horse pulled a hawthorn tree to harrow the blanket of conifer needles, and seed was sprayed by helicopter. The resulting dense swathes of deep heather are wonderful, particularly for the fabulous emperor moth<\/a>.<\/p>\n I was as fascinated then as I am now about what it is we are restoring. The singularity of the Stiperstones landscape is mysterious and strange, qualities that persist beyond human intervention. We cannot restore its old mining communities; or the novels of Mary Webb, set in this world \u201cbetwixt and between\u201d ours and the \u201cworld of faery\u201d; or what DH Lawrence described as \u201cthe old savage England<\/a>\u201d. Our obligation now is to the more-than-human. They hold the magic of this place.<\/p>\n