Ecologist taking on MoD to protect skylarks says he has faced threats and assault

Martin Pugh at Middlewick Ranges, where he was apparently assaulted trying to protect skylarks. Photograph: Teri Pengilley/The Observer

The song of the skylark has filled poets’ hearts for centuries, from Shelley’s “blithe spirit” to Wordsworth’s “ethereal minstrel”. But there is little that is poetic about a row over the birds that has blown up in Colchester.

Campaigners seeking to save Middlewick Ranges, a former Ministry of Defence firing range in Essex, are furious that some of the 76 hectares of rare grassland were mowed last month, an act that they believe has killed skylarks and their chicks, which nest on the ground.

When Martin Pugh, an ecologist at Essex Wildlife Trust and a member of the Save the Wick campaign group, challenged a tractor driver mowing the grassland last month, he was chased away by a member of security staff and video footage appeared to show him being assaulted.

The MoD plans to sell Middlewick Ranges and 1,000 new homes are expected to be built, but there has been a long campaign to save the site, known locally as the Wick. Last week, charities including Buglife, Butterfly Conservation, Essex Wildlife Trust and Colchester Natural History Society wrote to Natural England asking it to designate it as a site of special scientific interest.

The site includes rare acid grassland, which the charities say is home to 20 species of birds of conservation concern on the red and amber list, including nightingales, as well as protected barbastelle bats and nearly 1,500 invertebrates, including 167 species of concern.

The MoD has previously said that 63% of the land will be reserved as green open space. In the meantime, a spokesperson said, the grassland needed to be maintained, since it presented a risk of wildfire in the dry summer months, threatening houses near the site.

Skylarks breed between April and August, according to the RSPB, and they nest on the ground. Since males do not perch in trees, they sing to attract a mate while flying, and sometimes hover and dart through the air – the behaviour that inspired Shelley and Wordsworth.

So when Pugh discovered on 1 July that the grassland was being mown, he went there to try to stop it. Video taken by Pugh shows him talking to a man who identified himself as being in charge of security in the area for Landmarc, an MoD contractor.

Pugh tells the man, who is sitting in a red Toyota pickup truck, that the men would be committing a wildlife crime if the tractor operator carried on mowing. As the tractor starts moving, Pugh can be heard saying: “If he’s carrying on, there’s a problem. I’m phoning the police right now.”

The footage then shows him running away as the security man chases him, saying “you’re getting on my nerves now – get away from here”, then lunging at Pugh, saying “You’re like Stop Oil”. Then, as the man approaches Pugh again on the edge of the field, the camera is dropped and he can be heard telling Pugh “you’re trespassing”, while Pugh repeats “you’re assaulting me”.

Pugh said: “Within three minutes of talking to him, in a very measured, civil way, he had assaulted me and physically chucked me off the site. Wrestled me off the site.”

Essex police arrived and Pugh said that its officers told the men to stop mowing. On 11 July, the mowers returned. This time, police told Pugh he could be arrested if he tried to stop the tractor.

Later, he and other campaigners were told that mowing would not be an offence under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 because police did not believe birds were being intentionally killed or injured. The workers had checked the areas where they were mowing by walking through the fields, officers said, and had set the mower blades to four inches above the ground to avoid damaging nests.

Further video footage shows the mowers saying the grassland had been cut each year for 20 years and they had never seen any skylarks.

“As they were cutting the site, there was a skylark hovering over the tractors,” Pugh said.

On 21 July, the ecologist’s colleagues shot footage of a skylark on grassland mown the same day “with insects in her bill, looking for a nest, looking distressed”, he said. “That’s the kind of thing that has got people very, very angry.”

An Essex police spokesperson said: “We were called to reports of an assault at Middlewick Ranges in Abbots Road on 1 July. A man sustained an injury to his arm in the incident. Our investigation is ongoing.”

The force said that, “based on current evidence”, the MoD had not committed a wildlife offence. “We have advised the MoD, as we do any landowner where this type of allegation has been made.

“We have advised this group of concerned residents to speak directly to the MoD regarding their concerns over ground-nesting birds.”

A Landmarc spokesperson said: “We are aware of a video circulating on social media showing an altercation between one of our employees and a campaigner on tenanted land at Middlewick Ranges. We are taking this matter very seriously and conducting a thorough internal investigation. Consequently, we are unable to comment further while this investigation is ongoing.”

The MoD said: “Middlewick Ranges is surplus Ministry of Defence land and, having undertaken surveys over a three-year period, we are planning to sell the site to deliver the best value for the taxpayer.”