Dog backpacks used to help seed nature reserve

Dogs with backpacks are being used to help rewild a nature reserve in East Sussex.

The specially designed pouches sprinkle wildflower seeds as the dogs sniff about on their daily walks.

The pilot scheme is being run by Railway Land Wildlife Trust in Lewes and aims to replicate the activity of wolves which used to roam our landscape before they went extinct in Britain in around 1760.

Project manager Dylan Walker said the dogs covered four times the distance that a human does and visited areas of the nature reserve which are harder to reach.

“We’ve been so excited about this project, it’s about getting dogs and dog walkers involved in nature conservation on the reserve," said Dylan.

“If we went back 1,000 years we would have seen wolves and possibly bears roaming the landscape, there might have been bison, wild boar, wild horses. They all had a positive impact on the eco system.

“We’re a small urban nature reserve so we’re very limited in terms of bringing those animals back, but what we do have is a proxy for wolves which are our domesticated dogs.

“We thought, what if we worked with our dog walkers and dogs to regenerate the reserve? Wolves and other animals would carry seeds from grasses and flowers on their fur from a completely different place.

“The dogs put on a pack which have holes in them. As they run along the seeds fall out of the satchels. We’re hoping to see the effects of that by next Spring.”

Railway Land Nature Reserve is a small 25 acre site which is bordered by a railway line and the River Ouse.

Steve Lewis and his dog Crumble were some of the volunteers involved in the scheme.

He said: “Some dogs did it better than others, the big dogs enjoyed wearing these backpacks. You could follow the trail where they went.”

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