Warleigh Nature Reserve

During Saturday’s regularly scheduled volunteer day at Warleigh Nature Reserve, Phil mobilised some regular and some new volunteers to tackle some of the largest chunks of Himalayan Balsam. It’s spent decades crawling up the hill from the river in an area previously so overgrown we couldn’t get access, but we cut our way in and found a lot more than we were expecting!

The plan is straightforward: cut it down before it goes to seed, so fewer seeds wash downstream into the river and connecting waterways each year. The bigger ambition is to push our clearance as far upstream as we can, since every plant we stop here is one less plant overrunning the banks further down. It's a slow campaign, but a winnable one.

To establish a solid baseline, and make sure the work we're doing is creating provable improvements to the biodiversity and bioabundance at Warleigh Nature Reserve, Protect Earth have teamed up with the amazing ecologists at RSK Wilding: Richard Prew, Eve Proudlove, Julia Dickinson and Mark Lang. They spent the day conducting habitat and bird surveys, rummaging around our woodlands, wetlands, and grasslands, turning over every leaf and rock to collect data which they will use to explore the enhancement potential of these habitats. We cannot wait to see the full results of what they found, but so far, it sounds like our goals are compatible with the reality on the ground!

Adjacent to the fields of Warleigh Nature Reserve, Protect Earth has taken in 11 acres of ancient woodland to restore and manage. Named Hazel Wood, containing amongst other very exciting things an area of hazel coppice which has become up to 30 years overgrown, which makes this section dark and less biodiverse. To encourage a more diverse growth of species and canopy levels. Fun fact: we’re told it's named Hazel Wood not for the species within, but for a previous owner named Hazel.

Phil and the team spent the day diligently training with a coppicing expert, then, as you can see, the result was a beautiful, bright clearing which will allow more biodiversity to emerge. So far, the harvest of hazel has been put to good use to create posts for the deer fencing around the clearing and steps for the compost toilet.