IT is the sixth year of the Wyre Forest GAP project.

The scheme focuses on providing cattle to graze areas of conservation value - local nature reserves, sites of special scientific interest, and national reser-ves in north Worcestershire.

Many of these important wildlife areas are near urban areas, very fragmented, or require very short and specific grazing periods in order to benefit the area's ecology.

Despite a few awkward moments, including cattle-related incidents in pubs, greenhouses and rivers, the project has been highly successful in fulfilling many of its conservation goals.

In the natural world nearly all eco-systems have animals which graze on the plant life as part of their make-up, be those herds of diplodocus grazing on the Jurassic plains, or marine iguanas cropping seaweed in the Galapagos.

The way that the various grazing animals select their food is nearly as important to an eco-system's make-up as the way most flowering plants rely on insects to pollinate them.

For millenia this was all very well, but the dawn of man threw up a few problems when he started to farm animals.

At first all was well, as man needed to stay within the limits of the natural eco-system to be able to successfully sustain his farms. In fact many eco-systems flourished, including meadows and heaths.

Problems only really developed when modern technologies were applied to agriculture to increase yield and productivity.

Plants were artificially fertilised, "weed" plants treated with herbicides, animals were fed supplements and land that did not respond well dropped out of production.

As a result, much of the once ecologically diverse and not-so- long-ago abundant habitats have all but disappeared from our landscape.

This is where Grazing Animals Project comes in, by reintroducing cattle grazing to the few remaining fragments of these once abundant habitats.

There have been some outstanding successes - Puxton Marsh is one example.

Grazing was introduced to improve the eco-system and save the dwindling population of orchids.

At the start of the project the orchids were limited to a few in a small corner of the reserve.

This spring they have now dramatically increased in numbers and spread across almost the entire southern field.

Things are just as rosy at Redstone with the Himalayan balsam, which up to a couple of years ago threatened to engulf the reserve and swamp the native wildlife.

These days there is hardly a balsam plant left and the reserve blooms with native colour.

Seven six-month-old cows, which are all but impossible to see as they are dwarfed by the wetland vegetation, currently graze Redstone.

The cattle have formed tunnels through this tangle, meaning that the only visible sign of their presence is the odd cow pat or occasional twitch of vegetation.

Given a few months they will have grazed this down to a much more manageable height, helped the reserve's ecology and possibly put on a vast amount of weight.

As for Puxton, the cattle are a little later this year and will be arriving on Tuesday.