With its driftwood, capsized boat and crystal-clear waters, Looe Island looks more like a scene from Robinson Crusoe than the well-trodden shoreline of Cornwall. Few understand that just a mile from Looe – a seaside town whose narrow streets overflow with travelers in the summertime – there is a wildlife sanctuary.
In Cornwall’s just marine nature reserve, birds nest in thickets of trees, sheep graze grassy slopes and seals look for haven in the island’s rocky bays. Quiet and tranquil, Looe Island is almost deserted – apart from 2 wildlife wardens whose job it is to take care of the land so its biodiversity flourishes.
Although its area, likewise referred to as St George’s Island, is just one mile, Looe has a long and diverse history. Records show the island was an early Christian settlement, a tin trading centre and a hotspot for smuggling. In more recent years, it was lived in by 2 sis, who satisfied a youth imagine purchasing a personal island.
Babs and Evelyn Atkins protected the land in 1965 for £22,000, and retired there to compose books about their remote island life. With no descendants, the sis declined a multimillion-pound deal to change the island into an amusement park, and bestowed it to a charity, the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. Since 2004, Looe Island has actually been a nature reserve with the sole objective of letting wildlife grow in peace.
“We’ve tried to manage the land so that everything can go through its lifecycle, whether it’s an insect, flower or bird,” says Claire Lewis, who is the present caretaker of Looe Island together with her partner, Jon Ross. The couple, who are nature wardens for the trust, have actually been the island’s only citizens for almost twenty years. Their job includes keeping an eye on types, reporting back to wildlife groups and hosting a restricted variety of visitors on the island.
From Easter through to October, offered the tides are right, travelers can board a main boat from the mainland and take a self-guided journey around the island. Trespassing – by curious paddleboarders, swimmers and boaters – is prohibited.
“It’s about minimising the impact on the island,” says Lewis. “The more people you have to stay longer, the more likely there will be disturbance.”
The island’s location, a patchwork of forest, maritime meadow, sand, shingle and rocky reef, has actually offered a natural haven for wildlife. “One of the things you notice is how full of life it is,” Lewis says. And, at a time when biodiversity remains in freefall – with reports recommending half of the world’s bird types remain in decrease and flying pests have actually plunged by 64% given that 2004 – Looe Island appears to be a pocket of resistance.
Lewis disrupts every now and then to mention holly blue and comma butterflies, or to flaunt the island’s nest of excellent black-backed gulls, the biggest in Cornwall, which can be discovered relaxing on rocks or bending their remarkable 1.5-metre wingspan.
After almost twenty years on the island, Lewis can distinguish quickly in between the calls and cadences of bird tune – singling out oystercatchers, herring gulls, blackbirds, wrens or chaffinches like a conductor in an orchestra. Surrounded by natural noises and smells, her senses have actually ended up being fine-tuned.
“We can tell if somebody has landed [on the island] because of the noises the birds make,” she says. “When people get off the boat, I can tell if someone’s washed their hair in strong shampoo or if they’re wearing a lot of deodorant.”
Looe Island functions as a barometer, determining the toll human activity has on wildlife. Away from the mainland’s chemical soup of sewage spills, pesticides and light contamination, nature is provided space to breathe. “I think we’re far enough away for it to not have a huge impact, but we can’t control everything,” Lewis says.
Compost is made from mainly natural deposits, such as sheep manure and seaweed, and the island’s energy is from photovoltaic panels and wind turbines. More just recently, visitors are being advised to clean their shoes with disinfectant, to secure versus bird influenza dispersing from the mainland.
Managing an island includes a fragile balance. Lewis says it is not likely that types such as red squirrels would be intentionally brought over. “If we start introducing things we can’t easily control, it can shift everything out of balance,” she says. Their general rule is: “This is what happens happily here, let’s not tinker with it too much.”
There are a couple of exceptions – a flock of Shetland sheep was presented to cut scrubby spots of land so cormorants might search for victim, and Russian vine was eliminated since it was gradually suffocating the island’s apple, plum and walnut trees.
Still, a look at the island’s veggie garden provides a tropical impression, as the moderate and protected environment generates crops such as yam and kiwi. The wardens grow the majority of their own vegetables and fruit, trading surplus runner beans or rhubarb for mackerel, fresh from the boats of passing fishers. The couple make do without the majority of high-ends, though “we could do with a pub”, says Ross.
By now, the wardens understand the island like the back of their hands, however periodically they marvel. In 2013, Lewis found a clear jellyfish with long, great arms. It was a crystal jellyfish, a types seldom discovered in the UK, and normally seen in the warmer waters of the east Pacific. Sightings of uncommon jellyfish, credited to the environment crisis, are increasing, with 11 types found around the UK and Ireland in 2022, according to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).
External groups and volunteers frequently check out the island to perform bird ringing, nest counts, butterfly transects – when observers count numbers along a repaired course – and seal recognition. Sue Sayer has actually been doing regular monthly studies on the island with the Cornwall Seal Group Research Trust given that 2008. “It’s a wonderful case study of how positive management can increase diversity,” she says. As an overseas and intertidal island, it is a crucial stopover for mobile seals – “like a service station on the seal motorway”, she says.
The island utilized to depend on “a sweet spot” for marine life, where warm currents joined cooler, nutrient-rich waters. But, says Lewis: “There does seem to be a shift, where warm water is getting further north. We can do our best here, but there may be other factors going on.”
For now, life stays mainly the same on Looe Island. “Most of the time it’s peaceful. It’s good for anyone’s mental health to have that quiet,” says Lewis. “Island time” is stressed by the rhythms of nature. “Yesterday, we saw our first sandwich terns of the spring. We’ll say ‘hello’ and then ‘goodbye, we’ll see you next year’,” she says.
There is a reassuring sense of connection when functioning as the guardian of a little island. “I like the idea that some of these birds could have been the same ones the sisters were looking at 20 years ago,” says Lewis.
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