One of the most important achievements of more than a century of nature conservation is the preservation of large natural landscapes covering hundreds of square kilometres in national parks and protected areas such as Soomaa, Lahemaa, Alam-Pedja and Kõrvemaa.

We owe our semi-natural grasslands to the bison and aurochs

Alongside the indigenous wilderness – bogs and forests – we also have the responsibility to preserve Estonia’s semi-natural grasslands, such as alvars, floodplain meadows, wooded meadows, fen meadows, coastal meadows and wooded pastures.

The Estonian term for ‘semi-natural grassland’ – ‘pärandniit’ – includes a reference to ‘heritage’. If we think of heritage, our thoughts first and foremost go to our ancestors, the countryfolk whose livestock used to depend on these areas for their livelihood, but mankind actually inherited these areas from quite different creatures – the rhinos, elephants and hippos who maintained these open grasslands hundreds of thousands of years ago.

By the time the pachyderms had to leave the stage (largely due to human intervention), the grasslands were already taken over by wild horses, bison and aurochs. And only a while later by people.

Over thousands of years, grasslands have developed a distinctive biodiversity, which was already entirely unique by the time man had invented the scythe. The hundreds of species (plants, fungi, insects, lichen, etc) that have evolved in these light-exposed conditions are also native to Estonia, but now they coexist with cows and mowers, not with bison and aurochs.

Just as the rainforest with its hundreds of different species has evolved undisturbed over thousands of years under the same environmental conditions, our alvars, wooded meadows and other endlessly biodiverse grasslands have evolved over the centuries.
 

Urban parks are a reminder of the wooded meadow

These grasslands are an important part of our cultural heritage and identity. Our urban parks are also a reminder of the wooded meadow, which must have been a favourite landscape of the primitive European because there were plenty of species to eat, enough space to see both potential prey and predator, and, of course, enough suitable wide canopy trees to hide from the latter. Thus, people’s current park culture is a reminder of this ideal landscape.

The ecological value of semi-natural grasslands, including biocontrol, soil enrichment, long-term carbon sequestration and preservation of pollinators, was recognised in Estonia in the 1990s. We did this largely drawing on the painful experience of Western Europe, which had successfully emerged from war, but at the cost of a loss of biodiversity.

The agriculture of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Estonia, despite the slogans, was inefficient compared to that of Western Europe, and, therefore, the biodiverse grasslands with their inhabitants were still there when we regained our independence, but had already begun to disappear and overgrow. ‘Today, there are about 420 square kilometres of semi-natural grasslands in Estonia, and this is no longer an open-air museum of the past.’

At the end of the last century, the loss of grassland species was identified as one of the greatest threats to our biodiversity, and in 2001, the restoration and maintenance of semi-natural grasslands began as a nature conservation project throughout Estonia. Today, there are around 420 square kilometres of semi-natural grasslands in use in Estonia, and this is no longer an open-air museum of the past, but an established sustainable and evolving system that provides employment for more than a thousand people in rural areas and has become a considerable business activity.

It is important to note that the transition of our agriculture from dairy to beef cattle husbandry in the early 2000s was also largely driven by international conservation projects. The more than 1,000 so-called ‘nature conservation cattle’ provided to farmers certainly eased the transitional difficulties of rural life at a critical time for agriculture.

In just a few years, beautifully flowering open-country species will recover

The restoration of semi-natural grasslands is inevitably an undertaking displeasing to the eye, as the wall-like juniper or pine thicket – often impenetrable, but at least green – disappears and is replaced by a battered and, at some point, lifeless patch of land.

Even though we know that such a juniper or pine thicket only supported a few species, the sight is still unattractive at first. It is perhaps appropriate to compare such grassland restoration with a medical operation – an eye surgery or tumour removal is not a pretty sight either. However, the patient will recover quickly after a successful operation and will soon be a joy to see. It usually takes a couple of years for the beautifully flowering open-country species that have been hidden in the soil memory, or seed bank, to recover.

It should be remembered that the ecological restoration of nature is all about recovering what has already been, not creating something new, and, therefore, the history of the area should be taken into account. Conservation sites are selected on the basis of careful analysis and there is nothing random about it.

Sometimes the changes are so far-reaching and irreversible that it is impractical to try to restore the original state. Thus, it makes sense to let a wooded meadow that has evolved into a high-diversity herb-rich grove in the heart of a woodland to develop naturally into a forest. However, the value of such a herb-rich forest, which is one of our most species-rich habitats alongside the wooded meadow, is not comparable, for example, to a clump of coniferous trees planted in a coastal meadow, which only has a limited variety of species.

Successful nature restoration can only go hand in hand with a vision for the future, which means that the values that are being restored need to be explained. The pine community in the coastal meadow is replaced by the play-flight of godwits and curlews, who need the open landscape, and the lark can enjoy not only singing and nesting, but also raising their young, as it is much harder for a fox or a raccoon dog to find prey in an open area than in a landscape scattered with isolated patches of sparse pine groves with limited species. We cannot do this work without the support of landowners, and we already have 800 landowners who engage in the maintenance of semi-natural grasslands on a daily basis.

These are just a few of the messages that underpin the work needed to restore semi-natural grasslands. The European Union Nature Restoration Law may have got bogged down in the corridors of Brussels, but we are getting on with the much-needed restoration work.
We are preserving forests and letting them grow indigenously where they have historically been, and we are restoring grasslands where they have been mown

in an environmentally-friendly way for centuries. This is the only way we can succeed and preserve Estonia both for ourselves and for thousands of other native species with whom we share it.

Photo of the Meadow Gladiolus in a coastal meadow at Häädemeeste was taken by Vaido Otsar.