THE citizens of Wytham, an attractive village just outside Oxford, are
outraged. A planning application has been submitted for 93 radio masts between 8
and 12 metres high to be erected in their local woods and parkland. The land
lies entirely within Oxford鈥檚 green belt and most of it is a site of special
scientific interest. The proposal, say the villagers, is an act of
鈥渟ophisticated vandalism鈥� against the environment, and they are demanding that
the planners jettison it.
Think again. The application was made, not by a mobile phone company, but by
the University of Oxford on behalf of its ecologists and zoologists. The
university was bequeathed the Wytham Estate in 1943, and allows its scientists
to run the 400 or so hectares of woods as an biological research site. The woods
are a site of special scientific interest not because they are stuffed with rare
species (there are none), but because of the importance of the work that goes on
there.
The masts, moreover, are not intended for vulgar commercial gain, but to
track the movements of wild animals. No longer will eager young researchers have
to rampage through the woods at night with radio tracking devices to follow a
single badger, nor get up at the crack of dawn day after day to watch the
feeding habits of great tits, unable to distinguish one bird from another in the
weak light.
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Instead, the radio masts, which are spaced 200 metres apart in a hexagonal
grid that spans the woods and the nearby farmland, could simultaneously track
thousands of animals fitted with tiny radio tags, day and night for years on
end. And it would be possible to study their movements in relation to each
other鈥攇reat tits compared with sparrowhawks, badgers with hedgehogs,
weasels with field mice鈥攖o build up a complete picture of how an ecosystem
functions across many levels of the food chain.
The masts are only a small part of the overall WYTENET project, which aims to
turn Wytham Woods and its surrounds into a vast living laboratory. The woods are
to be wired up with power and data cables, which will run along existing rides.
These will then be linked to the masts, to weather and air quality monitoring
stations, to video cameras and other experiments, so that real-time data can be
fed back to remote computers and observers.
According to Will Cresswell of the university鈥檚 zoology department, whose
plan it is, the equipment would finally bring ecological data gathering up to
speed with modern data handling, giving ecology a new rigour and solidity and
putting it well on the way to becoming a truly predictive鈥攁s opposed to
merely descriptive鈥攕cience.
Wytham Woods is already one of the world鈥檚 foremost ecological research
sites, having inspired more than 700 research papers鈥攎any of which form
part of the foundations of contemporary ecology. Cresswell鈥檚 plan would carry
the tradition forward and ensure Wytham鈥檚 (and Oxford鈥檚) place at the cutting
edge of ecology into the 21st century.
In response to the villagers鈥� concerns, Cresswell is proposing to conceal
more of the masts within woodland and clumps of trees, use existing buildings
and telegraph poles, and do without some altogether. But the mood in Wytham
village remains hostile. Yes, residents appreciate that the scientific work is
important鈥攂ut say that only an 鈥渙verwhelming benefit to humanity鈥� could
justify the project and its intrusion into Oxford鈥檚 green belt.
But to my way of thinking, the real environmentalists in this debate are the
ecologists. Their work on badgers could remove the need for the Ministry of
Agriculture鈥檚 cruel and costly badger cull, for example. We might discover
whether magpies really do wipe out songbirds, or whether the effect is
insignificant compared to the impact of modern farming. And we would be able to
quantify the effects of climate change and air pollution on a range of
ecosystems.
Wytham residents should ask, if the masts are refused planning permission,
then what? The work will surely be carried out elsewhere, and Wytham Woods could
lose its position as a world-class research site. The university鈥檚 cash-hungry
land managers would take over from the scientists and in all probability turn
the woods over to commercial forestry, deer stalking and pheasant rearing. No
radio masts perhaps, but rather chainsaws, timber trucks, rifles and shotguns.
Give me the scientists鈥攔adio masts included鈥� any day.