Woodland Conservation

18th March 2025

Another beautiful day for our Shepherdleas Wood session.

It’s bird-nesting season so activities are now concentrating on path edges where we carried out 3 separate activities:

1. Removing two fallen trees blocking the Green Chain walk and removing holly saplings and stumps along the ‘red’ path.

2. Creating a pond and hibernaculum.

3. Creating a living hedge beside part of the Green Chain Walk.

For more information about our activities, see beneath the photos.

Wood anemones are one of the indicators of ancient woodland and are appearing and spreading along the now sunny verges thanks to our holly clearance last year.

We have created a small pond in the stream which runs beneath the Green Chain Walk near Falconwood to retain more water in the woodlands for wildlife, rather than it pouring into the culverts.

A dam has been put in place to hold the water shortly before the repaired bridge,

We built a hibernaculum on the sunny bank beside the stream to provide a refuge for reptiles and amphibians. A ditch was dug 1.5m x 50 cm then filled with logs of different shapes and sizes, leaves, twigs, clay from the pond, etc. This should soon be covered with grass and other woodland flora and appear to be a natural feature.

Preparing the bank for the hibernaculum.

Another group are receiving a demonstration on creating living hedges through a process called laying. The hedges will eventually protect the habitat from fragmentation in a natural way.

This photo shows the technique, where a sapling is almost cut fully through and is bent down to be almost but not quite horizontal. The thin part left in place transports water and nutrients up the tree to maintain its growth. Smaller branches can be snipped off and planted beneath to grow into new saplings.

A support has been created for one of the trees we laid.

Two trees on one of the main paths in Shepherdleas fell and blocked the path some time ago. Our volunteers have cut it down to open up the route once again.

The fallen wood has been pushed to the side, following good conservation practices. This way, any invertebrate habitat on/in the wood will be disturbed as little as possible.