Thank you to all the people who came along over the last two days to pull Balsam in Diimmingsdale. We have tackled areas on the paths above Red Road and the Ramblers and around the chained oak.
Last week I was with the Churnet Valley volunteer gang at a new location near Grindon helping a local farmer control some scrub. The scrub has been threatening to take over some rare species rich limestone grassland, so the landowner has a proportion of the small blackthorn bushes down.
The last few weeks the volunteer group have been carrying out some woodland management at St Edwards Park near Cheddleton. The woodland hear hasn’t seen any management for some time.
Over the past three months the Churnet valley volunteers have been dedicating their time to tackling the invasive Himalayan balsam that has infested our otherwise beautiful valley.
This week the volunteers and I conducted our first riverfly survey of 2018. We visited 3 sites in the upper catchment of the Churnet and kick sampled for riverbed invertibrates.
For the past few weeks the volunteers and I have been constructing artificial rot boxes. This is an innovative technique to encourage dead wood loving insects to breed.
The last two weeks I’ve been working with the volunteers at RSPB Coombes Valley, joining forces with staff and volunteers from the RSPB to do some habitat management.
A couple of weeks ago the volunteers and I joined staff and volunteers from Severn Trent Water to carry out some woodland management on their site at Tittesworth. The work was in aid of three areas of the woodland’s ecology.
Last week one of our volunteers led us on a bit of a change of tack. The task was to carry out a riverfly survey on a point along the Churnet. These surveys are part of a national scheme to monitor invertibrates within river catchments.
So far through these blogs I’ve explored how veteran trees support a massive range of other plants, fungi and animals that couldn’t survive without them. This week I’d like to look at how another animal that often gets overlooked really needs these ancient trees: us humans!
