O’r Mynydd i’r Môr / Summit to Sea

The project will be steered by stakeholders and local communities in the first instance and I think it’s going to be exciting to see how that turns out. For years our work has focussed primarily on the sea in this region, and I think it’s a really good opportunity to start looking at the land and the sea together.

Most people live and work on the land. It’s important to see that what happens on land can affect the marine environment, and start looking at it as a whole.

This project will have a strong focus on local livelihoods and the economy, which I think is essential to get that balanced approach and to ensure that you’ve got resilience and protection for both ecosystem and economy.

For me, that’s the key to make it successful long term: actually looking at all elements – culture, livelihood and Welsh language heritage – you’re looking at the whole thing.

It’s about bringing people together, and I think it will be really interesting and exciting to see how that develops.

But aside from the excitement there are also uncertainties and challenges, such as losses of biodiversity across the landscape and fragmentation of important habitats coupled with an increasingly difficult economic and policy situation which is putting pressure on the viability of making a living from the land. Summit to Sea is a hopeful development and an opportunity for bringing voices together.

Encouraging conversation about land use amongst a more diverse group of people is good because lots of people have got a stake in the survival of these habitats and of local culture and heritage.

It’s important that this place is recognised as ecologically and culturally significant.

The work I do is to help to restore ancient woodland – providing advice and support to landowners. Woodland restoration brings benefits both economically and ecologically.

For example, I work with woodland owners and small-scale contractors who are locally based to bring these neglected woodlands into management. Many ancient woodlands were planted with conifers in the 20th century. These sites need to be carefully managed in order to safe guard and strengthen their biological diversity. Also, the soils within ancient woodland are really important. These woodlands have never been ploughed or disturbed and so the soil retains a seed bank from the pre-plantation woodland along with a greater fungal diversity.

By managing these sites carefully, we can protect the genetic heritage of our local woodland ecosystems and at the same time create work for local contractors.

Farmers and landowners, they’re very concerned about maintaining their presence in the area. Collectively, as communities and families. They see the present time as changing times, with all the threats and opportunities presented by Brexit, and also Common Agricultural Policy reform.

I think what’s really important with the Summit to Sea project is this sense of ownership.

From my point of view, it’s not just to do with the environment, or ecology, or wildlife, it’s very much to do with the human ecology, and community, and culture.

That resonates very much for me in Wales because, as somebody who’s from Wales, I’m a Welsh speaker, all my relatives are Welsh speakers and I’m from a Welsh speaking community.

I think that has to be valued equally as much as the environment. I think one supports the other.

In time I think it should enable people locally to develop new business or work opportunities and to be able to stay in the area. We’ll all be able to be proud of living in a very rare place where nature is recovering not declining.

I have been listening and talking to a lot of people locally over the last 18 months mostly about land, farming and nature. I have visited some special corners of Mid Wales where nature is either holding on or even coming back, some for the first time.

I’ve also helped bring together a group of eleven organisations who work on forestry, conservation and rural development. We’ve been exploring how we can combine our efforts in the Cambrian Mountains and Dyfi Valley and hopefully make them add up to much more than the sum of their parts.

Most of my working life has been about reducing or limiting damage to the environment and trying to protect what is left, which is often a losing battle.

It is great to be involved in creating something that is so positive instead. And to be doing it so close to home is even better.

It’s so important to make sure that local people are the key beneficiaries for this. 

Things which bring more money into the area are really necessary. There is still a problem with young people moving out of the area because of a lack of opportunities.  

It would be good to have the young people seeing the Dyfi Valley as an exciting place where they can earn a living – and a good living. That way, things like the local culture, the Welsh language, will also be safeguarded as well.

It’s the sheer scale and ambition of the  O’r Mynydd i’r Môr / Summit to Sea project that excites me. There’s a long historic connection with the sea around Cardigan Bay, from old legends, through shipbuilding locally to current wildlife tourism. If we can connect projects on land, show how they influence the sea such as through better water quality and marine environment with thriving wildlife, we can stop seeing the sea as ‘separate’ and integrate it into a sustainable future for wildlife and people.  

Although historically there was a larger fishing industry in this area, it’s now much smaller and mainly small family boats. By directly involving fishers in co-management of the area we can all work together to improve the environmental quality of at least part of Cardigan Bay, improving sustainable fishing opportunities, increasing the wildlife and tourism opportunities. This in turn could help develop a local market. Too much fisheries policy has been imposed from a distance with little understanding of the local environmental and economic conditions. A locally managed sea would be better for all.