It certainly has been a hectic couple of months at Dove Stone across all of the projects in order to get all of the on the ground work completed before the breeding bird season begins in earnest. In addition, we've also had some issues with wildfires and the wonderful news of our Natura 2016 award for Conservation. On the WREN funded Spreading the Moss project, in March alone, we managed to complete the following bits of work in time!
Installed 100 stone dam gully blocks
The terrible winter weather and helicopter maintenance delays meant that we had to wait all winter to get these block installed. The 150 loads of stone (approx.. 1/2 tonne each) were finally flown out and installed in the last week of April. The purpose of these are to block gullies in order increase water table, slow down water-flow and peat loss (including sediment washing down to the reservoirs).
These stone blocks are installed in more-heavily eroded gullies where the peat sides are exposed, to compliment these, we will soon be installing gully blocks with plastic piling at the head of these water systems to create pools where S. capilifolium can be planted.
6 hectares of heather cut
This work had been in the pipeline for 6 years, and with the increased risk in fires during these summer months (as we've seen with 3 fires already on the reserve in the last 6 weeks!), it was essential that this work was completed by the Natural England deadline in the second week of April. With the hard work of the Contractors, we managed to get all of the cuts completed, and the machinery removed with a day to spare, easy! In addition, and as importantly, the cutting also helps to increase plant diversity by increasing competition and creating areas for Sphagnum planting; we've now created a lot of space for planting Sphagnum in the next 2 years.
The heather was cut using a flail towed behind a Polaris, believe it or not, getting the machinery on to site proved harder that the cutting work!
Planted over 9000 handfuls of Sphagnum
As the above work went on, our dedicated team of Spreading the Moss volunteers were out in all weathers harvesting an planting Sphagnum and I would like to thank them all for their hard work in the past six months. This include all of our regular, individual volunteers who come week in and week out and the groups that come from various organisations, such as Price Waterhouse Coopers (Manchester Office) and Manchester University They have achieved to plant a phenomenal amount Sphagnum in what has been a terrible winter to work at 500 meters! THANK YOU!!!
And so the work goes on...it's a busy summer of breeding bird surveys and water vole surveys, and then roll on July after our beautiful Curlews, Dunlins and Golden plovers have hopefully had a successful season, the planting, gully blocking and heather cutting will continue throughout the autumn and winter. If you'd like to join us, please email gareth.roberts@rspb.org.uk