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GarethR

16 months in...!

Time certainly flies when you’re busy with the first 16 months of my time on the project has flown by. A great deal has already been achieved with still a lot of planting work to do, but we are well on target to have completed what was promised to the funders (WREN) by this time.

During this year, I have also spent a great deal of time looking for Sphagnum sources across the UK. Clearly we have a severe shortage shortage in the Peak District as that's why this work is necessary, but this shortage also means that we have to search far and wide to find the quantities needed for the whole of Dove Stone (not just the parts that this project focuses on), and the important peat-forming species needed which we can't currently harvest on-site (although we're hoping that a recent study will change this very soon).


Earlier this year, following on from lengthy negotiations, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) granted us permission to harvest Sphagnum from non-SSSI sites in a managed coniferous plantation in southwest Wales; as a result, contractors harvested over 90,000 handfuls of mixed-species Sphagnum and transported and planted each handful across the restored blanket bog areas at Dove Stone.

Harvested Sphagnum in Wales

 Harvested bags of Sphagnum each containing 25 handfulsLarge dumpy bags packed into skips ready for transportation to Dove Stone

This was a great success story in cross-border partnership working as we are able to demonstrate to the NRW the techniques that they could use to restore areas under their management back to blanket bog (in terms of gully blocking and sphagnum inoculation techniques). Representatives from NRW visited Dove Stone to see our work in progress and see how this Welsh Sphagnum is making a difference.

NRW staff visit

NRW staff with the RSPB's Gareth Roberts

I have to say a massive thanks to our team of dedicated (and mostly crazy...you have to be to do this kind of work and enjoy it) Volunteers who have done an incredible amount of work since the first recruit in December 2015. I a little over 14 months, our Volunteers have:

  • Harvested (on-site) & planted 8,030 handfuls of Sphagnum across 8.6 hectares.
  • Installed 115 plastic- piling gully blocks installed (to put that in perspective, they have hammered 1,170 individual 100 x 33cm sheets using rather large and heavy mallets)

Installing plastic-piling gully blocks

Using mallets to drive in the piling sheets

  • Treated 80 pools that have formed behind these blocks with approx. 960 Sphagnum cuspidatum plugs covering about ¾ ha.

Piling dams at work

Pools created by piling dams for Spgagnum cuspidatum

  • Installed 84 heather bale gully blocks
  • Maintained 100 stone gully blocks
  • Cut 1 hectare of heather using brush-cutters
  • Completed 24 breeding bird surveys 24 survey days (8 sites (1km2) visited 3 times during the summer

All of this has totalled been done by around 50 different volunteers (some are regular, some occasional and some came as a group for a day) who have worked a total of 207.5 days!!!

A BIG thanks to everyone who’ve contributed these last 14 months and I hope to meet a few more hardy Volunteers in the coming months. If you would like to get involved, have a look at the volunteer page on the RSPB website:

http://www.rspb.org.uk/joinandhelp/volunteering/7729-sphagnum-moss-relocation-volunteer-dove-stone

And so, on to the next 20 months...