Our First Ever Wilder Horsham District Work Party!
By Chloe Harrison
Community Support Officer, Wilder Horsham District
Our volunteer work party days have begun!
Less than a year since the Wilder Horsham District project’s beginnings we advertised our volunteer roles, and we have been delighted with the response. We now have two volunteer roles on offer, both of which will play a vital role in supporting the landowners and community groups we are working with on the project to improve their land for wildlife.
Our survey volunteers will be surveying birds, butterflies and plants to assess the presence and absence of species at sites and help inform suitable management plans, and our work party volunteers will be supporting practical works on the land to physically improve areas for wildlife.
We will have to wait for spring and early summer to get out and about with our survey volunteers, but autumn and winter are generally the prime time for work parties, so last November we picked up our gloves and thermos flasks and headed out on our first ever work party!
We met at Mount Wood, a plot of woodland near Rusper owned by Piers Pollard, for a spot of pond clearing and leaky dam building. Piers purchased the land last year with the aim to manage and improve it for wildlife, with one of many project ideas being to clear a depression site in the wood to create a woodland pond and restore some of the wet woodland surrounding it. So when he asked us to help restore this woodland pond, we were delighted to help.
Supported by a team of 13 of our volunteers (an amazing turnout for our first everwork party, thank you!), we cleared the woodland depression of its large logs and brash bundles in under an hour (we had expected it to take us all day!). Stacking the wood around the sides of the to-be pond, this also helped to create edge habitat and shelter for amphibians and reptiles using the pond and surrounding woodland.
Clearing the depression area to make way for a woodland pond.
Completed!
With so much time still left in the day, we set to work collecting materials for and building leaky dams along the entry water channels into the pond. Leaky dams are a brilliant way of ‘pretending to be beavers’, with the dams controlling the flow of water throughout the seasons. They help reduce or prevent flooding in higher rainfall months by holding back the water, pushing it out of the water channel and onto surrounding land, creating wet woodland in the process at this site too. Come the dryer, summer months, the stored water can trickle through the dams, helping to maintain a constant flow of water into the pond at a time where otherwise the streams would likely dry out.
After fuelling up on bourbon biscuits, we set to coppicing hazel and other trees to turn into stakes and collecting some brash we had bundled around the pond area, we created three new leaky dams before being treated to a wonderful site tour by owner Piers.
Building our leaky dams.
One of our completed dams.
A leaky dam in action, holding back the flow of water.
It was a great day and a brilliant way to kick off our work parties. We would like to extend a huge thank you to all our volunteers – by offering your time and skills, we are able to exponentially increase our support for local landowners and community groups, and can complete tasks that would take days or weeks in a matter of hours.
If you would like to join our Wilder Horsham District volunteers, we are still welcoming in new members and would love to meet you. For more details on our survey and work party roles, and how to sign up, visit the webpage Opportunities | Sussex Wildlife Trust.