Bringing Back the Birds: The ‘Ghost Woodlands’ Transforming England’s Barren Sheep Fells

The Howgill Fells are a smooth, treeless cluster of hills in the Yorkshire Dales national park, so bald and lumpy that they are sometimes described as a herd of sleeping elephants. Their bare appearance – stark even by UK standards – has been shaped by centuries of sheep grazing. Yet beneath the soil lie ancient tree roots: the silent traces of long-lost “ghost woodlands”.

Now, these woodlands are being encouraged to grow again. Over the past 12 years, 300,000 native trees have been planted across these hills in sheep-free enclosures. The results are beginning to be seen: birds and flowers are returning.

Birdsong ripples through the valley as first light spills over a ridge line and on to 26 hectares (64 acres) of fenced-off land near Tebay village. Meadow pipits, reed buntings and stonechats are among the choristers. A flush of cotton grass bobs in the morning breeze and a stonechat fledgling clings to a spindly branch, shrieking for a parent.

“We’ve been conditioned to see the uplands as barren for much of the year. It needn’t be that way,” says ecologist Mike Douglas from South Lakes Ecology, who is monitoring birds in the enclosures. “We are 10 years into what was ecologically very damaged land,” says Douglas, who is conducting his first of four surveys for the 2025 season.