A stag beetle on a log, photographed by Nigel Brooks. Britain's largest beetle likes to live in dead wood.

UNUSUALLY high numbers of stag beetles are being seen in Dorset this year.

Dorset Wildlife Trust says the county’s unusually hot Spring seems to have brought these fantastic creatures out nearly a month earlier than normal.

Steve Halliwell, project co-ordinator for the Trust’s Wildlife On Your Doorstep Project, said: “Early this June, as I was relaxing in the garden one warm evening, I saw at least a dozen male stag beetles fly over, a phenomenon I have never witnessed before.”

Stag beetles are globally threatened. In Britain they’re protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.

To see just one is a treat.

The male can grow up to 7.5 cms long – it’s Britain’s largest beetle – while the female rarely gets past 4.5 cms. However, the male is harmless, while the female can have a nasty bite.

Stag beetle numbers have been dropping since the 1940s, because of the destruction of their favoured dead wood habitats.

Dorset Wildlife Trust wants people to be less tidy in their gardens, and leave out old logs as possible places for stag beetles to live.

The Trust’s ‘Wildlife On Your Doorstep’ project offers a free information pack including  gardening tips, wildlife identification charts and recording sheets.

For more information see www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/woyd or contact Steve Halliwell at shalliwell@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk or ring Dorset Wildlife Trust on 01202 692033. The code is for the conurbation because Bournemouth is one of the UK’s hotspots for stag beetles.

The blades of the wind turbines proposed for Toller Down would reach roughly the same height as the radio masts at Rampisham by the A356 in West Dorset. Photograph by Nigel Mykura, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

TWO WIND turbines reaching as high into the sky as the biggest masts at Rampisham radio station could be erected on the summit of Toller Down in Dorset.

Farmer Henry Lovegrove, of Comforts Orchard, Corscombe, wants to put a pair of turbines near the A356, up along from the Rampisham site.

The machines could generate enough electricity to power about 100 homes.

A design and access statement supporting Mr Lovegrove’s planning application acknowledges that two 34.2m high structures would be visible for many miles across the West Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

But it argues that “the skyline has already dramatically been broken” by the radio masts at Rampisham and the mobile telephone masts at Winyard’s Gap.     

And it claims: “The proposed turbines at Toller Down will enhance the area’s eco-credentials rather than ruin the skyline further.”

The nearest property is about 500 metres away.

In the video from Transition Vision TV’s Farming Channel that accompanies this piece, Mr Lovegrove says that if planning permission is granted the next stage will be “to go out to to tender, because I haven’t got any money, to developers, and ask them to quote a price for ground rental.”

He adds: “There is some pressure to get the local community to invest in this, and that will also be a question I’ll be asking the developers, to see if they will offer the opportunity to people in the locality to invest in these turbines, so they actually feel they own local energy production.”

The application is strongly supported by Corscombe Parish Council, while individuals from across Dorset and Somerset have also backed Mr Lovegrove’s vision.

“Bring them on and save our planet,” writes Ricky Hawkins from Shepton Beauchamp in Somerset.

“I doubt that they will offend the eye,” writes Ali Cameron, who indicates that he will be able to see them from his home in Marshwood.

Rev David Harknett, of the Melbury Team Ministry, writes: “The turbines seem very appropriate in an AONB. After all, we are seeking to safeguard the outstanding beauty of our whole planet!” 

Objectors include the Boileaus from Witcham Farm in Rampisham.

They say: “The dowland ridge has more than enough ugly clutter along its length.”

They add: “Off shore wind farms have been approved for Dorset, therefore we have more than contributed to the ‘green power movement’”.

And they conclude: “Applications of this sort are all about money. We would like to suggest that in the unlikely event the application is approved, it should be on condition that 90% of the money generated is distributed to the rural area and individuals blighted by these machines.”

Six hundred and fifty metres of land were dug out at Winterborne Herringston about two miles south west of Dorchester.

A new channel being created at Winterborne Herringston. Photograph by Sarah Williams.

Water flowing through the new channel at Winterborne Herringston. Doesn't it look great? Photograph by Sarah Williams.

It’s hoped it will provide a habitat for a rare water crowfoot and invertebrates such as the threatened mayfly Paraleptophlebia werneri and the rare blackfly Simulium latipes.

Brown trout are among the fish expected to use the new stream for spawning in wet winters.

Winterbournes are wild rivers that only flow during wet winters when the land can soak up no more.

They have a lovely lively swing.

The Dorset Wild Rivers project is being co-ordinated by Sarah Williams of Dorset Wildlife Trust. Areas covered include the Frome and Piddle Valleys and the chalk stream tributaries of the Stour, Allen, Tarrant and North Winterbornes.  

She said: “Winterbournes are very special, appearing and disappearing quite naturally and providing a rare environment for wildlife.

“With our partners we want to see them flourishing again in their secretive way as part of Dorset’s network of wild chalk rivers.

“We have had previous success on the South Winterbourne at Winterborne Came, with both rare mayflies and blackflies recorded in the first season, so we have great hopes for Winterborne Heringston this spring.”

The Dorset Wild Rivers project is being led by Dorset Wildlife Trust with funding from the Environment Agency and Wessex Water.

Other partners include the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), Dorset Biodiversity Partnership, the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), Queen Mary University of London, Natural England and Purbeck Heritage Committee.

"The heavy waves sigh and crash": Eype Beach near Bridport, on Dorset's Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. Photo by Maurice Budden, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

ON the way to the beach it starts to rain.

A soft, pearl-grey winter’s day, the mist forever coalescing into light rain, and dissolving back into mist. The narrow road cuts and twists between yellow sandstone banks; down, down to a tatty turning circle and the dip in the cliffs worn by the little stream’s slow seep into the beach: Eype’s Mouth.

Ignore the battlement of static caravans looming on the headland and plunge, not too literally, down shallow concrete steps, past signs which warn: “Rock falls: Cut off by tides: Mud flows” and: “These cliffs are dangerous and liable to fall at any time”.

Sea surges in, grey and foam-laced white. The heavy waves sigh and crash, turning and tumbling with deliberate, muscular strength. Their edges bubble and cream: wet whipped egg-white sizzling on shingle. Here, near the shore, the water is the colour of putty, but far out the bowed horizon is pure celadon.

Let’s walk. Underfoot the scrunchy pea gravel scrapes and squeaks. Sudden patches of sand give relief to legs already wearied by trudging on banked and sliding stones. Look closer underfoot – individual pebbles lucent with seawater; yellow rock turns to amber, red rock – carnelian, black rock – obsidian.

Saturn-ringed and Jupiter-blotched they lie like drifts of miniature planets, or glossy, marbled eggs; easy now to believe that they, like us, are made from the dust of stars.

Raise your eyes and the beach as a whole is patched red-roan with sand, boulders and stones.

As this is a Sunday, there are other walkers out in search of solitude, exercise and a breath of Nature. Two teenage girls with cameras seek to record the atmospherics via techniques of mechanical reproduction. You can gaze along the beach at the spumy, breaking waves and the top of Thorncombe Beacon disappearing into the sea-har and see the moody, picture-postcardish image they may have captured.

Single photographs, however good, will be unable to convey all of this; the sense of the damp wind blowing in your face, the sea noise, that kestrel who was suspended over the cliff edge, the sludgy heaps of carunculated, elephant-grey mud subsiding at the foot of the cliffs, the sharp, paper edges of the cliffs receding to Seatown, and the waves’ endless lift and tumble.

Extracted from Switch Off The Light And Let Me Try On Your Dress by Sara Hudston and John Skinner, published in a limited edition of 500 copies by Agre Books (2002).

As part of the World Heritage Site of Dorset and East Devon, Eype Beach is judged by UNESCO to be of "universal value". But, in monetary terms, its value to West Dorset District Council is £1. Photo by Sarah Charlesworth, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

EYPE BEACH near Bridport – part of Dorset’s world-famous Jurassic Coast – is to be sold by West Dorset District Council.

The beach’s value is reckoned by the council to be £1.

“Anticipated proceeds” from the sale of Eype Beach are also officially recorded as £1.

(Click on this link to see a list of properties – including Eype Beach – that West Dorset District Council hopes to sell, with prices.)

The beach was first bought by the Borough of Bridport in 1932 to protect it from gravel extraction. It was inherited by West Dorset District Council when that came into existence in 1974.

So, could you or I really now buy a Dorset beach for £1? It is possible that more would have to be paid.

In response to a query from Real West Dorset, a council spokesperson said: “As part of its Asset Management Plan, West Dorset District Council’s technical services team has conducted a general review of the council’s property assets.

“Reviews such as this ensure that the council adopts a strategic approach to managing its property and is prudent given the current economic climate.

“Eype Beach does not provide an income to the council but the property does have associated management costs and legal liabilities. The report therefore concludes that there is no reason why the council should continue to own it and recommends that it is sold.

“The lack of income generated by the beach accounts for the low asset value recorded in the report. However, this is not an indication of what a buyer may pay for the property.

“The council has an obligation to its council tax payers to get the best return it can from its assets and the capital obtained from the sale of property pays for the capital investments that the council makes into the local community.”

The proposed sale of Eype Beach is part of a series of property disposals that West Dorset District Council hopes will bring in £1.5 million.

That’s aside from the millions expected to accrue from the sale in Dorchester of Stratton House (anticipated proceeds, £3 million), Glyde Path House (£500,000), the frontage of Trinity Street car park (£114,000) and the long lease of Charles Street car park (judged with the Old Market car park to be worth £1,579,211).

Click here to read an extraordinary account of a walk on Eype beach.

UPDATED: The artist Amanda Wallwork has pointed out that West Dorset District Council’s executive committee did resolve to give the council’s technical services manager approval to dispose of a long list of property “in acordance with the council’s disposal policy”. The only proviso with regard to Eype Beach – and land at West Cliff & Great Piece, West Bay – was that specialist auctioneers should be sought.

The statement below was put out by West Dorset District Council on January 11.

- In response to strong media interest in a council report in which Eype beach was included on a list of properties to be considered for sale, West Dorset District Council has released the following statement.

Speaking about Eype beach, West Dorset District Council Leader Robert Gould said:

“This land was acquired by the local council many years ago in order to protect it against gravel extraction. The land is not being sold at the moment, but we will be taking specialist advice before deciding how to proceed.

“It is good practice for public organisations to regularly review the assets they hold on behalf of the public.

“Eype beach does not currently provide an income to the council, but the land has associated management costs and legal liabilities. This is why a nominal value of £1 has been recorded in the council’s asset management plan. Clearly this is not an indication of what a buyer may expect to pay for the land – it is a nominal figure only.

“Eype beach is part of the Jurassic Coast world heritage site and a popular beauty spot. It is loved by many local people and visitors alike.

“If the council did decide to sell the land it would want to ensure future public access and responsible management of this important land.”

At this time West Dorset District Council  has only one property for sale. The Tannery Road site in Bridport consists of four shops and a café. (Click here to read about the sale of the Cafe Royal). The site is to be sold by public auction 25 February 2011 and the selling agents are Symonds & Sampson.

Contact details for Symonds & Sampson: 23 South Street, Bridport, Dorset, DT6 3NU – Tel 01308 422092

People interested in this matter are advised that West Dorset District Council are unable to offer any further information at present. Media enquiries and requests from members of the public will be met with the statement provided above.

West Dorset children Hattie Brooker and Max Brooker with Recycling Promotions Officer Dave Levi.

WEST DORSET District Council is asking residents to compost pumpkins left over from Halloween.

The council’s recycling trucks will be driving around the district until Friday 5 November with pumpkin stickers urging people to recycle their pumpkins.

Pumpkins – says the council – should be cut up before putting them into your compost bins, or food waste caddies if you live in the Sherborne area.

Whole pumpkins will not be taken away.

Robert Gould, the leader of West Dorset District Council, said: “Food waste makes up around a third of the weight of the average rubbish bag. Based on this, West Dorset residents throw away about 7,000 tonnes of food waste, which goes to landfill.

“Aside from the large and increasing cost to tax payers for sending waste to landfill, food waste rotting in landfill creates methane. Half of this food waste thrown away could have been composted at home at very little cost.

“It is important to recycle your pumpkins this Halloween”.

For more information about the food waste recycling scheme visit  www.dorsetforyou.com/foodwasterecycling/west or contact West Dorset District Council on 01305 251010. For more information about how to recycle more visit http://www.dorsetforyou.com/recycling

Editor’s Note: This is a slightly re-written version of a press release issued by West Dorset District Council. It must be an unappealing prospect, if you’re a binman, having to pick up hundreds of pumpkins. Imagine what the back of your dustbin lorry could be like – or your own back.

(But I wonder – is a district council allowed in law to say – “Whole pumpkins will not be taken away”?)

Sheep: Their belching is concerning researchers. Photograph by Nigel Chadwick, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

Those devilishly clever boffins on the Australian Sheep Cooperative Research Council have discovered that some 90% of the methane released by sheep into the atmosphere comes from belching. And they’ve decided that this has got to stop.

So to save a reluctant planet from destroying itself they have put aside their boomerangs and beers and are busily breeding the sort of sheep that has more acceptable table manners. It seems that flatulence isn’t the problem that I might have imagined; apparently, it’s horses wreaking havoc on the atmosphere with that.

No, with the woolly lot, it’s the old-fashioned belch that is going to do for us all.

It gets better.

In New South Wales the cobbers in white coats have built special pens where they can measure exactly how much pollutant a sheep emits each day. Now there’s a job for a grown man.

In a fever of discovery they are all getting in on the act. Another branch of the Australian Sheep Cooperative Research Council now tells us that 66% of agricultural emissions come as methane from the guts of farm animals.

Are you frightened yet?

You certainly should be.

Because of that methane, 90% comes back out of the mouth and not from the blunt end, as we had always thought.

But there is hope on the horizon. Already they’ve discovered that the more a sheep eats, the more it belches. Well, there’s a few million Aussie dollars well spent. Now comes the difficult bit – knocking up an ovine creature that you could take to tea with your maiden aunt.

No stone is being left unturned in the constant battle to prevent the donators of mutton sending us all back to the Stone Age.

Tirelessly are scientists striving to prevent catastrophe for mankind at the hand, hooves and bellies of our farm animals.

I, for one, will rest that little bit easier in my bed tonight sound in the knowledge that there are those in the world seeking our salvation.

Advance Australia Fair.

Farmers of West Dorset hang on just a little longer – the cavalry are on the horizon.

The Horace and Ellen Hannah Wakeford Bequest is meant to encourage the return of a kind of experimental and eco-friendly craftsmanship.

The first graduate students on the Association’s new Design and Make course will arrive this autumn – and West Dorset will then be able to boast Britain’s first campus devoted to alternative uses for wood.

As was first reported on Real West Dorset earlier this year, the Architectural Association has been given outline planning consent for staff and students to design and put up more than a dozen new buildings in the 350 acres of Hooke Park.

The forest already has several unique buildings from the 1980s and the 1990s, when it was controlled by the Beaminster furniture maker and designer John Makepeace; others have been constructed this century by visiting AA students.

There is nowhere else quite like it.

The Hooke Park Workshop, by Richard Burton of ABK and Frei Otto, with the engineers Buro Happold. The building uses spruce thinnings from Hooke Forest to form a compression grid-shell structure. Completed in 1989. Two of the three bays of the roof accommodate a large fully equipped timber workshop, the third contains an office-studio with computing facilities and a small library. Photograph by Valerie Bennett.

A Separate Place. A hanging retreat in Hooke Forest built in 2007 during a month-long summer workshop by a student group led by Jesse Randzio. Photo by Jesse Randzio.

The AA is the world’s most renowned and influential school of architecture, set up 162 years ago.

The Hooke Park vision is – and I quote – “to combine the global experience and talent of the world’s most international architectural school with that of local craftspeople, whose wood-working, building, boat-making and other skills [will help] to create a unique new setting for architectural education.” 

It will be hands-on, back to nature.

In other words, as the editorial puts it in the new issue of Crafts magazine, “it aims to re-introduce craft skills into practice… Do we detect a backlash against the computer-led funny-shapism which has dominated the [architectural] profession for the last 15 years.”

Hooke is supposed to reflect the idea that if you’ve physically put something together yourself, you’ll better understand why buildings stand up or fall down.

Hence, perhaps, the Wakeford Bequest, given by the family of Norah Garlick in the name of Norah’s parents, Horace and Ellen Hannah Wakeford. Horace Wakeford’s building firm was a favourite of Sir Edwin Lutyens. The company continues today as Stepnell Ltd, which has an office in Poole.

Brett Steele, Director of the AA School of Architecture, said in a statement: “We are enormously grateful to Norah Garlick and her family, who share our vision of a woodland campus dedicated to fostering a re-connection between hand-on design and construction cultures as a path forward towards new ways of thinking, working and building.

“The Horace and Ellen Hannah Wakeford Bequest is an unprecedented commitment to not only the AA, for which we are deeply appreciative, but also demonstrates great optimism in our open experimentation with not only new kinds of architecture, but as well, new forms of teaching and learning.”

The Crossings Project, completed in 2007. An experimental footbridge within Hooke Forest. An AA student-built project led by Valentin Bontjes van Beek and Nathalie Rozencwajg. Photograph by Martin Self.

By excellent, I mean almost gratuitously obsessed with quality, and with the means and the skill to produce superb results.

The first individuals that came to mind were the West Bexington chilli growers Michael and Joy Michaud, the Beaminster furniture maker John Makepeace, the Bridport tiler Tony Bird of ASB Tiling, the West Milton cider maker Nick Poole, and the Netherbury wildlife photographer Colin Varndell.

Then I got distracted, and forgot all about it, until Dorset Wildlife Trust sent me some images from their new 2011 calendar, all given by Colin Varndell, and all – you guessed it – excellent. Really tremendous. See:

Dormouse, hibernating: January's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Nuthatch, February's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's 2011 calendar. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Otter: Pictured for September 2011 on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.

Mr Varndell is a long-standing member and supporter of Dorset Wildlife Trust. He said: “Dorset is one of the richest counties for wildlife in Britain. If it is to remain so, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us, as custodians of this natural heritage, to protect, preserve and improve it for future generations. We can all help to achieve this by supporting the Dorset Wildlife Trust.”

In other words, and entirely reasonably, given his own generosity in supplying pictures, he wants people to buy the Trust’s new calendar.

Myself, I think that’s an excellent idea.

The calendar is called Wildlife Encounters and it costs £5. It’s available from Dorset Wildlife Trust at www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/calendar or call 01305 264620.

It’s also stocked by most Dorset Tourist Information Centres, including Bridport, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Wareham and Wimborne.

The last Labour Government gave Dorset and Devon county councils, plus numerous partners, £376,500 to explore how seaside communities might adapt to meet the challenges of coastal change.

Dorset and East Devon Coastal Change Pathfinder Project team members now want people to let them have photographs or written accounts of coastal erosion, flooding, storm events and changing coastal defences in Swanage, Ringstead, Preston Beach Road and Bowleze Coveway, Weymouth, Seatown, Charmouth, and Sidmouth and Pennington Point in East Devon.

1930s Scouts look out to sea, but it's the coastline stretching out west past Eype and Seatown that draws the modern eye.

A modern view from the same cliff path as above. Photograph by Stephen Williams, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

Contributions will be used to illustrate how the coast has changed in the past and provide the basis for visualisations of how it may change in the future.

Project coordinator Rupert Lloyd, said: “Perhaps you have a photograph showing how one of these areas looked in the past, or showing a major storm or landslip? Maybe you can provide a written account of how the coast has changed in these settlements?

“These personal accounts will be invaluable to the project and we would love to hear from you.”

Contributions can be submitted – up until the end of September – by email to a.potter@dorsetcc.gov.uk or by post to The Jurassic Coast Pathfinder Team, Environmental Directorate, Dorset County Council, Dorchester, Dorset, DT1 1XJ.

Pathfinder Team Note: If you would like your contribution returned please include your postal address. Please note that any information submitted may be used by the project in community engagement activities and future publications. All materials submitted should be copyright free. If you have any questions or require further information, please contact the project team on (01305) 225515.

Editor’s Note: The partners involved in the Dorset and East Devon Coastal Change Pathfinder Project are: Dorset County Council Devon County Council East Devon District Council, Purbeck District Council, West Dorset District Council and Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, parish and town councils, the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Team, Dorset Coast Forum, Devon Maritime Forum, Environment Agency. English Heritage, Natural England, National Trust, Dorset AONB Partnership, environmental groups and local civic societies, RSPB.