Rewilding row after National Trust ploughs over irreplaceable waxcap fungi
Botanists said the work had destroyed a habitat that had taken decades to form
The grassland, now ploughed-over
Credit: Wild Lakeland
The National Trust s attempt to rewild a meadow in Cumbria has backfired after ploughing destroyed irreplaceable waxcap mushrooms.
Botanists accused the charity of cowboy conservation after the grassland near Cockermouth in the north west of the Lake District was ploughed over in an attempt to create a wildflower meadow.
Waxcaps are brightly-coloured mushrooms which grow on undisturbed ground, but they are increasingly under threat from intensive farming.
Rob Dixon, a botanist and conservation ecologist, who first noticed the incident and had spotted the fungi there in the autumn, said he had reported it to Natural England as a possible breach of regulations limiting changes to rural land. The government agency is investigating.