A NATIONAL Trust area ranger celebrates 40 years of service this year, including a long period of looking after the Upper Wharfedale estate. Will Abbott finds out more.

PETER Katic moved from North London to the North of England in 1981.

He began working for the Trust in Borrowdale in 1984, before taking up the area ranger role in the Yorkshire Dales.

The Upper Wharfedale estate, which consists of 2,670 hectares between Kettlewell and Oughtershaw, was gifted to the National Trust in 1989 by two brothers, Graham and David Watson, who had been purchasing farmland piecemeal since the Second World War with the eventual intention of donating it to the Trust.

Mr Katic has facilitated numerous improvements to the estate during his tenure.

They include reintroduction of plant species, installation of dry-stone wall seats for hikers to have a sit and a sandwich, and conservation of blanket bogs, which are an important carbon sink. Mr Katic recently participated in a project to protect the blanket bog on Buckden Pike, one of the Wharfedale Three Peaks and the region’s tallest peak at 2,303 feet.

The project involved laying new flagstones between the summit and Buckden Pike’s Polish War Memorial.

As Mr Katic explains, blanket bogs are areas of “very, very deep peat … the un-decomposed remains of heather and moss dating back thousands of years.”

Though blanket bogs were once drained to provide access to farm machinery and convert to pasture, the Trust’s policy is to fill in ditches and conserve the bogs in recognition of their ecological importance.

Mr Katic is also working with stakeholders to have a dry-stone wall seat installed at Buckden Pike’s summit, which is planned for autumn.

The reintroduction of the lady’s slipper orchid over the past 20 years is another initiative which Mr Katic has facilitated.

The flower, which is aptly named for its shape and is one of Britain’s rarest wildflowers, “used to be very common back in the late 1800s,” when it could supposedly be bought in bunches at market.

It has “quite specific requirements as to how it will germinate and regenerate,” and favours a dappled woodland shade environment.

Efforts of the National Trust and other bodies throughout the north of England to reintroduce the lady’s slipper mean that it may be able to self-seed in the future.

As to flora on a larger scale, Mr Katic was occupied with the planting of trees in the Upper Wharfedale estate before he even landed the job as area ranger, in a way.

On a walk with his father that took them opposite the fellside above Yockenthwaite Stone Circle, Mr Katic’s father remarked of the relatively blank terrain confronting them that, in his opinion, there were not enough trees.

Around twenty years later, the very same site is now scattered with trees that punctuate the hillside and make the area look even more lovely.

It is along the gills, or thinner valleys leading down into the main valleys, that quite a lot of woodland creation has been achieved during Mr Katic’s tenure, after securing agreements with tenant farmers.

Thousands of trees are purchased and planted in plastic tubes, with fences erected to deter livestock, although as Mr Katic explains the intention is not to create “dense woodland” but rather to maintain the farming landscape which “we always expect to see in the Dales” while having “more trees scattered about.”

A tasteful smattering of trees in the edges and corners of fields is also good for livestock “because when – if – we ever get any hot weather, they can shelter in the shade of trees.”

Mr Katic’s favourite memories of his time as area ranger include the descent of cyclists and spectators on Yorkshire during the Tour de France’s Grand Départ ten years ago.

Mr Katic remembers when the cyclists came up Wharfedale and thousands of people congregated to watch.

The Upper Wharfedale team worked with a tenant farmer to run a campsite for the weekend, almost like a “mini festival.”

Also a valuable memory for Mr Katic was the volunteers he trained as part of the European Voluntary Service initiative.

The volunteers arrived from Europe on EU-funded placements, for cultural exchange and personal development.

He is proud of the people he has taught as part of the Trust’s ranger apprenticeships initiative, too.

Of the seven people he helped to train, five of them ended up in his line of work - including one who works in the Dales, and another who started a role in the Lake District at the beginning of this year.

Before retiring in 2025, Mr Katic will facilitate the building of a permissive footpath on a tenant farmer’s land on the last stretch of the walk from Buckden to Hubberholme, which currently requires walkers to join back onto a minor road.

The new footpath will measure about 600 metres.

Mr Katic will also be involved in hosting a group of trainees from the National Trust’s Walk Together Pathway initiative, which teaches people from the ‘global majority,’ or ethnic minority backgrounds, about the work of the Trust.

After retiring, Mr Katic plans to continue walking the Dales, of course, but will also spend time with his granddaughter, visit his son in China, and tick off the rest of the Wainwrights – he reckons he has completed four fifths of those 214 English peaks so far.